I Go to the Barn Because I Like the Tab
by dragonmactir
Summary: What do an abscessed tooth, a haunted condominium, and suspiciously appropriate background music have in store for fans of LASSIET?  Only the Shadow knows.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _Psych_ or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other Psych-Os like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

**Rating: **K+

**Spoilers: T**hrough current episodes, particularly strong from _Heeeeere's Lassie _and _Shawn Rescues Darth Vader._

**A/N: **The events of this story take place sometime after, but in direct reaction to, the side-plot events of _Shawn Rescues Darth Vader_. Very vaguely inspired by the "I wouldn't say no to a sloppy joe" line from _Heeeeere's Lassie_, which either is or would be a great advertising slogan for Manwich or that sloppy joe restaurant chain, whatever the hell it's called. (Whatever, I just love any mention of sloppy joes because that's my cat's name - "Sloppy Joe the Very Slow.") Aside from the obvious or semi-obvious or will-be-obvious or completely obscured plot monkey of this piece, the basic premise is that each chapter will in some way relate to a favorite song, if I can manage it. Otherwise, disregard that last statement. (OH! _MADE-RITE!_)

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter One: Hard-Time Losin' Man<strong>

Lassiter had been in serious pain all day, though he gave little outward sign of it. The toothache he'd been foolishly ignoring for weeks had deepened into the hot, burning agony of abscess, which meant root canal, which meant a massive investment of money and time to allow some thick-fingered stranger to put hands in his mouth and dig around in the offending back molar until it was nothing but a dead, ground-down stump, which he would have to spend more time and money on covering with a shiny silver crown. At least it was a back tooth and not one that would show in a smile, because a porcelain crown was probably out of the question for awhile, given the fact that he'd recently sunk his life savings into a creeptacular new condo.

He'd have to get it taken care of, because one thing you could not ignore was an abscessed tooth. It killed Ramses the Great and it could kill Carlton Michael Lassiter, too. But it was the weekend, so it would have to wait a couple of days. And the pain would have to take a back seat, because today was Saturday, and that meant Prisoner Visitation at LOMPOC Women's Correctional.

Just walking through the doors of the grim bunker-like building lifted his spirits, and the pain faded into the background even though, as always, the glorified babysitter guards, doubtless jealous of a _real _cop, made him check his weapon and searched him. He stood at one of the viewing windows and waited.

As soon as she came in, as always remarkably beautiful despite the unflattering color of the orange jumpsuit, he knew something was seriously wrong. She looked…_apprehensive. _And apologetic. His heart fell into his size twelve-narrow shoes and the bright pain of his bad tooth flared back into consciousness.

He sat down in slow-motion and reached for the black plastic receiver on the wall. She sat down with obvious hesitation. "Hello, Marlowe," he said dully. "This is it, then, isn't it?"

"I'm so sorry, Carlton," she said, and she did sound truly sorry, but what difference did it really make whether she felt badly or not? It was still _his _heart in the dumpster, not hers. "It's just…Adam asked me to dinner, and…well, I guess I finally realized that since I don't have to take care of Adrian anymore, I'm free to…kind of…_explore_ life a little."

"Adam. Adam _Hornstock_, your lawyer?" The lawyer _he'd_ introduced her to. The lawyer _he'd _paid for. For a moment he considered planting evidence on the Bieber-haired barrister. He'd deserve it, him and his little ass-cheek chin and his rubbery lips. But even if he really were the type of cop who'd do such a thing, suddenly the whole idea of even the pettiest revenge just seemed like a colossal waste of time and effort. Not worth it.

"Yeah," Marlowe said. "He's not as handsome as you, or as strong, and I don't think he'd know a Clint Eastwood movie reference if I clubbed him over the head with one, but…well…he was very sweet to me, and he is awfully cute…"

Sweet and cute. Two adjectives he didn't even _want_ to apply to him, and yet they were ruining his life again.

"…Carlton?" she ventured into the long silence. "Carlton, please talk to me. Tell me you're going to be okay."

He looked at her as though squirrels were swan diving out of her nostrils. Okay? _Okay?_

He swallowed. "I'll be all right, Marlowe, don't worry about me," he lied. Not the first time he'd told that lie, and doubtless it wouldn't be the last time, either, unless his tooth did a Ramses the Great on his ass. He stood up. Her eyes followed him, big and brown and beautiful and sad. "I, uh…I hope you're happy, Marlowe," he said. He shook the cobwebs out of his head and tried again. "That's not sarcastic or bitter or anything like that, I honestly hope you're happy. You deserve it."

She placed her hand flat to the glass, as had been their ritual since the first time he'd come to visit her. He ignored the gesture, hung up the phone, and walked away. He could barely be bothered to collect his Glock on the way out.

He climbed behind the wheel of the black Ford Fusion and just sat there for a long moment, keys hanging limp in his hand. He felt like his heart was abscessed, and he wished he could pay to have a thick-fingered someone reach in and sever the nerves, grind it down to a barely useful lump, and cover it in shiny, nerveless silver. Teflon, so nothing could stick. Adamantium, so it could never break again. He wouldn't mind a set of foot-long retractable claws, either, come to think of it.

He roused himself with a deep sigh and put the keys in the ignition. As the hybrid engine purred to life nearly silently, the stereo blared on, restored to the middle of a Jim Croce CD that Henry had loaned him.

"_Woah, sometimes skies are cloudy, and sometimes skies are blue. Sometimes you see it and you eat the bear, but sometimes the bear eats you," _Croce sang, blissfully unaware that the bear of his life would eat him before he really had a chance to get off the ground. _"Sometimes I feel like I should go far, far away and hide, 'cause I keep a-waitin' for my ship to come in, and all that ever come is the tide. And you think you seen trouble? Well, you're lookin' at a man, uh huh, oh the world's own original hard-luck story and hard-time losin' man."_

Lassiter could relate. He turned off the stereo and put the hybrid into gear. It was time to go home.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _Psych_ or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other Psych-Os like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

**Rating: **K+

**Spoilers: T**hrough current episodes, particularly strong from _Heeeeere's Lassie _and _Shawn Rescues Darth Vader._

**A/N: **Okay, I'm not actually a big Jewel fan (indifferent to the voice, know only the stuff from the teen-years, don't like preachy adolescents who think that writing crappy poetry makes them deep - no offense to Jewel fans, just my biased opinion) but I think this song was written ABOUT Shawn Spencer, which made it perfect for this chapter.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Two: Foolish Games<strong>

Juliet sat with her knees folded to her chest and her arms crossed over them, blankets puddled around her, listening to Shawn snore. He didn't _always_ snore, only after eating a large meal right before bed - which meant that he _usually_ snored, since he almost always had a huge dinner (tonight it had been mango pineapple waffles with bacon, eggs, fried ham, sausage, and hash browns, and no goddamn wonder he was getting so pudgy). When he did snore, he didn't mess around - great, ragged goose-honk snores that rattled the windows, or so it seemed. If he wasn't snoring, he was talking. She'd learned a lot from lying awake, listening to him mumble in his sleep. Nothing she particularly _wanted_ to know, but all of it fairly innocent. Gus was apparently as frequent a visitor of his nights as he was of his days, and he had yet to mention Juliet by name at all. She would have felt faintly affronted by it, if she wasn't moving past feeling anything at all.

She couldn't take the noise and she couldn't leave - it was _her_ bedroom, for crying out loud - so she turned on the radio to her favorite light rock station and turned up the volume just high enough to mask some of the noise from her "partner." The term seemed more than a little laughable superimposed onto Shawn Spencer, and she only wondered why it had taken her so long to realize that. And what could she do about it, now?

"_You were always the mysterious one with dark eyes, and careless hair. You were fashionably sensitive, but too cool to care. You stood in my doorway with nothing to say besides some comment on the weather. In case you failed to notice, in case you failed to see, this is my heart bleeding before you, this is me down on my knees. These foolish games are tearing me apart, and your thoughtless words are breaking my heart. You're breaking my heart."_

Unbidden, a tear sprang to her eye and she snuffled it back guiltily. Shawn loved her, she knew that. Some part of her seemed to think that should be enough, but it _wasn't_, no matter what John Lennon said. All you need is love? Not without R-E-S-P-E-C-T, honey, as Aretha Franklin said in the words of Otis Redding, and respect was a quality Shawn was sadly lacking. She'd winked at a good deal of his disrespectful behavior over the years, putting it off as high spirits, _joie de vivre_, _bon hommie_, anything she could to excuse what was, in a grown man, basely inexcusable - Shawn was an incorrigible Sophomoric tease, too physically unintimidating for people to think he'd ever cross that thin line to bully, and a lot of the time his teasing had less to do with joviality and comradeship than it had to do with tearing someone else down in order to build Shawn's own self-esteem. Usually, that someone was her partner. And when he tore down Carlton, Shawn tore Juliet down as well, even though she thought he was too oblivious to realize it. And people said _Carlton _was socially clueless.

She wondered why she'd put up with the way Shawn treated Lassiter. In the beginning…well…maybe _that _wasn't so hard to figure out, Carlton had been terrifying to her back then, officious and mercurial and so very _patronizing_, though as Head Detective partnered to a moss-green rookie she supposed he'd had a right to be. Back then, when Shawn scored a point or two off of the irascible senior officer it felt like a minor victory to her, a quiet conspiracy she engaged to maintain her identity beneath the immense professional weight she bore as Lassiter's rookie partner. Later, though, when she knew Carlton better, knew that he took actual _pride_ in her accomplishments even when he was talking down to her…why did she keep letting Shawn get away with his petty name-calling and disrespect? Well…because it was the status quo, she supposed. Because it was easier to simply accept it as part of Shawn's irrepressible nature rather than to make the effort to correct it. And maybe because Carlton seemed to enjoy the verbal war they waged on each other, to a certain degree. And maybe because it was also just a little easier to blame Carlton for it than Shawn or herself. After all, he was the _adult _in the equation, wasn't he?

It disturbed her to think she'd really been that unfair. Carlton was all of thirteen years older than _her_, and only six or seven years older than _Shawn_. Most of the time he _was_ the mature one, but he wasn't the only adult. Dammit, they were _all_ adults, and they ought to act like it, Shawn included.

Shawn _especially._

How many times had he promised, in just the time they'd been dating, that he would change? That he would grow up? Buy a car? Take responsibility? Show some respect? Start spending his own money for a change rather than continually stealing Gus's company credit card? No resolution to that effect ever lasted more than a week. You could almost set your clock by it. Certainly you could mark it on your calendar. In all that time, what had once seemed charming and quirky had gotten…old and tiresome. And the scary thing was…she thought he might be considering a marriage proposal.

He was a con man. That was the crux of it. She'd considered his Big Lie harmless - beneficial, even, given what he did with it, but was there truly any such thing as a harmless con? Reuniting with Frank after so long made her think about that very carefully. Shawn wasn't bilking helpless widows out of their life savings with bogus séances - that she knew of - but still, he was perpetrating a con just as elaborate as anything Frank had ever done. And…sometimes she thought he didn't have the strongest moral compass even when the lie was discounted from the equation. He seemed downright _enamored _of Pierre Despereaux, for instance, and sometimes Juliet wondered about the abrupt shift in his emotional state when the late art thief was mentioned. He'd gone from jauntily certain the man had faked his death to abjectly despondent to…jauntily resigned? It made Juliet wonder what he was covering up. Add to that the fact that he thought hacking into Lassiter's computer and bank account was a "joke" and pretty soon Frank started to look almost honest by comparison.

Juliet didn't think she was ready to get married, and she _damn_ sure wasn't ready to make the same mistake her mother had made, marrying a con artist. Her mother's mistake was excusable because she hadn't known what Frank was until years later. Juliet had no excuse at all. And when she pictured the family she hoped someday to have, it certainly wasn't Shawn she saw by her side. The man who stood in his place was faceless and unnamed, but he was an entirely different breed of cat, so to speak. He would be strong - physically, yes, but mostly emotionally, a rock she could cling to when she needed support. He would be gentle, because God knew she'd never tolerate an abusive man. Quiet but outspoken, because she no more wanted a man who'd be cowed by her than one who would seek to dominate her. He did _not_ have to be charming, and in fact at this point she would welcome a degree of brashness - she'd had her fill of charm. She'd read a line recently in some book or other, a Brit lit mystery of the type she devoured in her spare time, about how charm was a shallow quality, designed to deceive the unwary. Perhaps the author had met Shawn Spencer before typing out that line.

Lost in her uncomfortable thoughts she didn't notice that the snoring had stopped, not until arms wrapped around her from behind and a wet pair of lips latched onto her neck. Startled, she rammed her left elbow into his solar plexus and a right-hook into his over-long nose.

"Ow! Damn, Jules! What the hell?" he whined through the fingers of the hand he clapped to his bleeding beak. She was shaking, still caught in the reflexive adrenaline rush of being taken unawares, and also…of having come at last to the decision she'd been circling for a long time.

"Shawn, you need to leave."

He looked at her over his blood-soaked fingers, eyes huge. He was dripping onto her designer sheets, no doubt, but she didn't worry about it. It would be the last time he'd leave any stains in her house or on her heart.

"Jules…what?"

"Leave. Now. You and I, Shawn…we don't _fit. _We never did, we never will. It's over."

He laughed, thinly, nervously. "Jules, that's not really very funny…"

"No. It's not. Not everything is _supposed_ to be funny, Shawn, in case you don't know that. Some things are serious. This, right now, is serious. I'm tired of your games. Get your things and go. Just…_go."_

Sheepish, silent, he dressed and slunk away with his proverbial tail between his legs. "I'll…can I…call you later?" he asked at the door.

"Much later, Shawn. _Much."_


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _Psych_ or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other Psych-Os like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

**Rating: **K+

**Spoilers: T**hrough current episodes, particularly strong from _Heeeeere's Lassie _and _Shawn Rescues Darth Vader._

**A/N: **You may get the impression, by the end of this story, that I'm something of a fan of the golden oldies. This is true. I do, however, like a wide variety of music from opera to death metal (in extreme moderation, and I have to be "in a mood"), but Lassiter just feels like a golden oldies person to me, not just the crooners of the forties but the rockers of the fifties and sixties to early seventies. Music from the late seventies to the mid nineties…mostly sucks, with the exception of a few exceptionals. ~Carltonesque growl.~

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Three: Crying<strong>

"_I was all right, for awhile. I could smile for awhile. But I saw you last night. You held my hand so tight when you stopped to say hello… Oh, you wished me well, you couldn't tell that I've been crying over you, crying over you. Then you said so long, left me standing all alone, alone and crying. Crying. Crying. It's hard to understand, but the touch of your hand can start me crying."_

Lassiter was _not_ crying, even his earliest childhood had been relatively devoid of tears. But he was no stranger to sadness. A lonely child who'd become a lonely man, the emotion seemed to have been his one constant companion throughout life. He was used to it, really. It was comfortable.

He sat on the couch, listening to records on the hi fi that Shawn Spencer had denigrated so long ago, a Blue Ice cooler pack pressed to his jaw. The television was on but the sound was off, because it was Sunday afternoon, and Sunday afternoons on basic cable sucked. They probably still sucked on a more expensive package, but he didn't care to pony up the green to find out. As long as he had the History channel and Investigation Discovery (he'd had to spring for a slightly better-than-basic package to get that channel, but only slightly) he was pretty well set for exactly how much television he was inclined to watch in the first place, which was rather little. The only reason he had the TV on right now at all was because sitting and staring at a blank screen held disturbing overtones of his initiation to Prospect Gardens and he didn't care to relive even a portion of that. He'd chased Guster through the building all the way to the basement with his saber drawn, and probably would have killed or maimed the hapless pharmaceutical salesman if he hadn't been stopped. He had almost _murdered_ _Guster_. Probably the least-likely person on the planet to drive him to homicide, despite who he habitually hung out with. The man was as threatening as a Yorkshire terrier puppy.

He kind of _looked_ like a Yorkshire terrier puppy, come to think of it.

"_I thought that I was over you, but it's true, so true, I love you even more than I did before, but darling, what can I do? For you don't love me, and I'll always be crying over you, crying over you. Yes, now you're gone, and from this moment on I'll be crying. Crying. Crying. Crying, yeah. Crying. Crying over you."_

Roy Orbison's plaintive lament came to its crashing conclusion and the record started to skip, as it always did at the start of the next song on the album which was, if he remembered correctly, "Mean Woman Blues." Sitting listening to a skipping record probably wasn't any saner than watching snowy channel 3 with the DVD player off, but he didn't quite feel energetic enough to get up and fix the needle. But the cooler pack was pretty well defrosted and a listless glance at his wristwatch showed that he could have another dose of ibuprofen so he heaved himself to his feet. He turned off the record player as he passed into the kitchen. As he walked through the small dining room area he noticed that the chairs were once again stacked neatly in a pyramid on top of the table - for the thirty-seventh time since he'd moved in. It was evident that not all of the craziness at Prospect Gardens was contained within the head of Amy Freakadoodle-Doo. He'd simply come to accept it as a part of life.

He put the skin-warmed ice pack in the freezer and grabbed another, then dry-swallowed two large orange store-brand pills from a bottle he pulled out of the same cabinet in which he kept his coffee and mugs. He was tired but restless. If it weren't for the ice pack he'd go for a walk in the park nearby, just to work off some steam and get out of the oppressively gloomy and oversized condo. He'd bought it with the intention of sharing it. Now he was stuck here alone. As always. Before Gilbert O'Sullivan could start whining in his head he went back into the living room and thumbed the mute button on the remote so that the oft-repeated episode of _The Devil You Know _filled the void of silence in unit number five thirty-six.

He heard a knock at the door. He rolled his eyes and went to answer it. There was only one person who could be standing on the other side of that door that he might actually be a little bit glad to see, and she would call, not simply pop by. _And_ she was probably slurping a mango raspberry smoothie and watching a _Stargate SG-1 _marathon with her idiot boyfriend and Guster.

He couldn't see much of anything through the spy hole in the door, but he thought he caught a glimpse of white hair. Art, the Korean war veteran who was grouchy and anti-social enough to make Lassiter seem warm and friendly? But no, when he opened the door he found the Turkel twins, Bea and Birdie, spinsters who'd managed to live for seventy-odd years without developing the slightest sign of individual personality. They'd severely creeped him out when he was under the influence of the drugs the psycho man-eater put into his ventilation system, and they still creeped him out now, but they were just elderly and rather pleasant ladies with unfortunate fashion sense. With their white hair and bright blue eyes they kind of looked like his mother, actually, minus the perpetual glare of suspicion, but that may have been exactly _why_ they creeped him out. One of them - he had no idea which was which, and wasn't certain they even felt that it mattered to begin with - held a covered tureen in her arthritic hands.

"Can I help you?" he mumbled around the pain in his jaw.

A conversation with the Turkels was an interesting experience. Sentences wound out of one mouth and then the other and back again without hesitation or apparent collusion, as though they shared a single brain or hive mind. "Hello, Detective. We saw you were feeling poorly so we thought we'd bring you some nice soup," they said, trading off seven times. "We know what toothaches are like, so we figured you didn't feel much like eating anything solid."

He hadn't eaten anything at all in two days. "Uh…thank you, ladies. How did you know I had a toothache?"

They looked at each other and giggled simultaneously. "It's in your _aura_, Detective," they said, as though that were the most obvious thing in the world. Lassiter nodded slowly. Aura. Right. He should have guessed.

_Whackaloons._

They handed over the tureen and curtsied - actually _curtsied_, who the hell did that these days? - themselves away. Lassiter closed the door and took the ornate silver soup bowl into the kitchen. The chairs in the dining room were back where they belonged.

"Thank you," he said to the empty condominium, just another part of his Wild and Crazy Life. The door of the kitchen cabinet wherein resided his coffee and mugs and NSAID pain relievers swung outward slightly and then closed again, as if in acknowledgement of the courtesy. The condo _wasn't_ haunted, that was ridiculous, but still…he preferred to err on the side of caution. As long as the activity was limited to artistic stacking of dining room chairs, and as long as he wasn't sitting in one of them when it happened, he was content to let it go. The blood in the ceiling fixture hadn't recurred since that first time, and it appeared that _had_ been the work of the Mad Man-Killer.

He'd hoped the chair-stacking was her handiwork as well, or a drug-fueled hallucination, but what can you do?

He took the lid off the tureen and a puff of fragrant steam hit him in the face. The soup was some sort of tomato-base, rich with herbs and finely-chopped vegetables - celery, he thought, though he couldn't be sure at a glance. His stomach growled like an angry rottweiler. He didn't eat food brought to him by relatively random strangers, even if they were colleagues, and _especially _if they lived in this loony bin. Crap on a cracker.

He debated death by abscess versus death by poison and found the proposition a virtual toss-up. But the abscess wasn't going to kill him any time soon. The Turkel twins looked like understudies from_ Arsenic and Old Lace, _and some poisons would kill him _very _quickly. The abscess wasn't quite bad enough yet to make that sound like a good thing. With a heartfelt sigh he poured the soup down the disposal and put the tureen in the sink to wash later. He consoled himself with the knowledge that the single cup of coffee he'd attempted to drink that morning hadn't gone down too well, as the heat made the bad tooth howl in agony. Hot soup would be no better. He went back to the living room to watch ID and tried not to think about cold, refreshing gazpacho.


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _Psych_ or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other Psych-Os like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

**Rating: **T

**Spoilers: T**hrough current episodes, particularly strong from _Heeeeere's Lassie _and _Shawn Rescues Darth Vader._

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Four: Always On my Mind<strong>

Lunch break or not, it was rare in the extreme for Lassiter to voluntarily turn down the police radio and turn on the stereo. Juliet looked at him. He'd ordered her a burrito at the fast food joint they'd settled on, but hadn't ordered anything for himself, not even a cup of coffee. He hadn't had a cup of coffee all day, that she'd seen. He looked tired, and…gray. Gray suit, gray tie, gray hair, gray eyes…even his skin seemed pallid and washed out. She'd begun to suspect last week that he was coming down with something, and now she was certain of it. Stubborn man probably should have taken the day in bed.

"I hope you don't mind," he said, and even his voice was tired and gray. "I'm not in the mood for light rock and I can't stomach that pop crap you listen to on the best of days, but I won't subject you to my Sinatra."

Willie Nelson's weather-beaten voice lilted out of the speaker system. Lassiter had discovered her secret love of the Red-Headed Stranger early in their partnership, which left him one up on Shawn, who probably didn't know who Willie Nelson was outside the arena of pot-smoking jokes. Lassiter actually was one up on Shawn for a _lot_ of observations about Juliet and her preferences, like the fact that she really didn't like the taste of pineapple in combination with anything and everything, that her favorite fictional detectives were Amelia Peabody, Mary Russell, Hercule Poirot, and Koko the Siamese Cat, that her favorite shampoo was peach-scented, that she liked to eat breaded chicken strips by tearing off one tiny piece at a time with her fingers and nibbling rather than biting off meaty chunks with her teeth like a ravenous animal. He also knew that her step-father had called her "Miss Mousie" because of her dainty epicurean nibbling.

"_Maybe I didn't love you quite as often as I could have. Maybe I didn't treat you quite as good as I should have. If I made you feel second-best, girl, I'm sorry - I was blind. You were always on my mind. You were always on my mind."_

She wanted to talk to Lassiter about Shawn, she wanted that desperately. Two things stayed her lips - or maybe it was three things, actually. Firstly, Carlton didn't look up for conversation today. Secondly, it was going to take a lot of courage for her to admit the true depth of her mistake to him, given how he'd reacted to the relationship in the first place. Third and lastly, he'd probably kill Shawn if she told him how, instead of giving her the space she'd demanded of him, he'd called her forty-eight times in the last two days and had stood outside her apartment last night holding a boombox playing Sting. She wasn't sure what the actual intent of that gesture was, he'd probably gone for the movie reference, but his choice of songs - "I'll Be Watching You" - was not merely poorly considered, it was outright _creepy_. The Official Stalker Anthem. No, she couldn't just out with the news that she'd broken off her ill-considered romance.

But she'd waited all weekend just wanting to talk to a compassionate listener, had nearly called him three times, and she had to say _something_. Unfortunately, she didn't know what that something would be until she actually said it.

She pushed the power off on the stereo, cutting Willie off mid-song. "Carlton…why did you request a new partner, really?"

It had been months. Even before Marlowe came along and lifted his mood considerably, Carlton had been doing his best to put whatever had crawled up his ass aside and keep their partnership in roughly the same condition it had been before he discovered her entanglement with Shawn Spencer. She had no business reopening the wound, especially not when he looked so miserable already. He heaved a deep sigh.

"Why do you even have to ask?" he said in that gray tired voice.

She should just apologize and eat her burrito. But now that she was started she couldn't seem to make herself stop. "Because I don't understand. What was the big damn deal? You acted like I did something unforgivable."

"As far as I knew, you had."

"_What?"_

He sighed again and half-turned to face her. She didn't miss the way his mouth seemed somehow tighter at the left outside corner, more turned-down. She was suddenly at least half-scared he was having a stroke. "Try to see this from _my_ perspective, O'Hara, and maybe you'll understand."

"But I _don't_ see. Just tell me what you were thinking, Carlton." Almost pleading. She still wasn't certain what she was hoping he'd say. _"I'm in love with you," _maybe?

"I don't trust anybody, O'Hara, but damned if I didn't trust _you_. _You_ were the _one person _on this good green earth I thought would never deceive me, never lie…and lo and behold, you _lied. _To _me. _About your involvement with _Shawn Spencer_. The lie of omission was one thing, but you didn't even tell me the truth when I asked you outright, not until I pressured you on it. And Shawn Spencer, O'Hara, is a professional liar. More even than that, he's a man who rarely misses an opportunity to disrespect me, to make mockery of the honest police work I've dedicated my entire life to, to make a terrific shitpile mess of every case he works on so that while he takes the glory I get the honor of cleaning up after his spastic self. Do you know how many times in the past six and a half years I've had to spend hours on the phone calming down witnesses and victims' families and former suspects who want to know why the hell the police consultants ate every goddamn thing in their refrigerator? That wasn't in the job description when I took the position of head frickin' detective and frankly I don't know why I still have to do it so often when that's what Henry's position was supposedly created for. And don't get me started on _that_ - yeah, I know the guy was a great goddamn cop once upon a time, but he is _not my boss _and I don't appreciate being ordered around by a part-time liaison every time his son horns in on a case."

"I understand all of that, Carlton, but what does any of it have to do with _me?_ I didn't tell you because I was afraid of how you'd react, and so was Shawn. And it was really none of your business. Our relationship had nothing to do with work whatsoever." Even as she said the words she hated herself for it. She wanted Carlton's sympathetic ear, not his defensive hackles. She was taking her anger and frustration at herself out on him, and that was bad.

"I can't believe that, O'Hara. If you'd been honest with me from the start then maybe I could, but you weren't, so I can't believe much of anything anymore. For all I know, in all that time you were helping him. Leaking information. Assisting his 'investigations.' Helping him steal my thunder and turn me into a walking punch line."

She gaped at him. "You…you can't honestly believe that I'd do something so underhanded. What would I even gain by doing something so monumentally stupid?"

"I don't know, O'Hara, but from my point of view at least it wouldn't be the first underhanded or monumentally stupid thing you've done, so who knows?" he said brutally.

She was furious. She was terrified. She was grief-stricken. She was in such a whirl of emotions she didn't know which was foremost. She took three deep, steadying breaths and listened to his own heavy, angry breathing.

"Carlton…?" she ventured at last in the tense silence. "Did you…have some sort of crush on me?"

He stared at her for a long moment and his throat worked reflexively. "No."

Another long silence, filled only with the sound of agitated breath and occasional bursts from the police radio.

"You're a bad liar, you know," Juliet said at last, as gently as she could.

"Yeah?" Lassiter said. The anger was gone from his voice at last and he was once more just a gray, tired man far older than his years and sick to boot. "Too bad for me, then, since that's what you seem to go for."

He unbuckled his seatbelt, opened the door, and got out of the car, leaving the keys in the ignition. Hands shoved deep in the pockets of his jacket and his shoulders slumped in defeat he walked away toward the bus station at the end of the block. She could have gone after him - she _should_ have gone after him - but she couldn't. She tried to call after him, but the tears she was crying stole her voice. All she could do was watch as the big green bus pulled up and he climbed on board.


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _Psych_ or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other Psych-Os like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

**Rating: **T

**Spoilers: T**hrough current episodes, particularly strong from _Heeeeere's Lassie _and _Shawn Rescues Darth Vader._

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Five: You've Got a Friend<strong>

Juliet sat in the passenger seat of the cruiser for a long time, crying. She might well have sat there all the rest of the day except her phone rang, startling her. She struggled to compose herself and answered it, hoping against hope that it was her partner so she could make some sort of apology.

It was Chief Vick. "O'Hara, is Lassiter with you?" The woman sounded anxious, which was very, very bad.

"No, Chief, I - "

"Shit. I knew it. Do you have a good idea of where he was supposed to be? Someone's got his cell, they faked his voice and tried to call him in 'sick.'"

"Chief, Carlton _is_ sick. He went home," Juliet said, hoping that was true.

There was a long silence on the other end of the line. "Carlton Lassiter called in _sick?" _Vick finally said. "He's never called in sick. He worked through a case of walking pneumonia in '04 that I thought would kill him. What's he down with?"

_An asshole partner,_ Juliet thought, but what she said was, "I'm not sure, Chief. Looked pretty bad, though. I was…" she laughed to show that the idea was ridiculous "…I was afraid he might be having a _stroke_, for a minute."

Another long silence. "Are you anywhere near his condo?" Vick said at last.

_Four bus stops_, Juliet thought. "Not too far, Chief."

"Could you go check on him, please? I can't trust him to seek medical care if he needs it."

"Sure, Chief. I'll head there now."

"Thank you, O'Hara," Vick said, in evident relief. "Keep me posted."

"I will. Bye, Chief." She put the phone away and got out of the car. She went around to the still-open driver's side door and climbed behind the wheel. She tried not to think about the fact that she was probably just about the last person on earth he wanted to see right now. At least if he answered the door she would have a chance to apologize and maybe explain herself, why she'd chosen today of all days to go on the offensive. Maybe he'd be able to forgive her if she told him that she and Shawn were finished.

She drove the cruiser to 1101 Prospect Gardens, the imposing five-story apartment complex Lassiter now lived in. She parked the dark blue Crown Vic in the equally imposing attached parking garage in the reserved slot next to the black Ford Fusion. She'd leave the car there and catch a cab back to the station. There wasn't much time left of her shift anyway, and she had intended to spend the afternoon catching up on paperwork.

She hated the long, slow ride to the fifth floor in the ancient elevator. She had never experienced the claustrophobic fear of elevators, but this particular one bothered her. It didn't creak or shake or hesitate and it had never, to her knowledge, gotten stuck, but it was still a seriously creepy elevator. The whole place was creepy, actually, from the overly ornate lobby to the grim hallways of the fifth floor. Maybe she was projecting - she didn't like the fact that Lassiter was still living here in the wake of everything that had happened after he moved in.

Finally the doors slid open and ejected her into the gloomy hallway outside Lassiter's corner condo. She fairly ran to the door of unit five thirty-six and pounded on the door frantically. She heard considerable noise inside - it sounded like Lassiter was violently rearranging his furniture, possibly by picking it up and throwing it - but no one came to answer her summons. She considered kicking the door open - all that noise constituted probable cause, surely - but aside from the fact that her partner would be even angrier with her for it the lock looked really sturdy and the door was as solid as she'd ever seen. Lassiter was really the door-kicker in the partnership anyway, and she was wearing heels.

She whipped out her cell phone. If he wouldn't answer the door maybe he'd answer the phone. She dialed his home number and then rethought that. The home phone he often ignored. The cell phone he _never _ignored. She cleared the screen and hit the speed dial.

"Lassiter," came the reassuringly gruff response.

"Carlton, let me in," Juliet demanded.

"In where?"

"_In where? _In your condo, of course. I've been knocking for ten minutes."

"I'm not _at_ the condo, O'Hara. I'm on the bus."

Juliet shook her head in confusion. "That's impossible, the bus would have stopped here half an hour ago or more."

"I'm not on the bus headed _home_, O'Hara."

"If you're not home, then who's doing all that banging in there?" Juliet demanded.

Silence. Then, "Probably the condo."

"_What?"_

"It likes to redecorate itself. Listen, why the hell are you _at_ my condo in the first place?"

"Making sure you're not dying of a stroke or something."

"_What?"_

"Well, you looked so sick, and the Chief was worried, and _I _was worried, and…"

"I'm not having a stroke, O'Hara."

"Then what's _wrong_ with you?"

More silence. "I've got a toothache," he said at last.

"A…toothache?"

"A bad tooth. I assume even Little Miss Perfect Smile has had one at some point in her life, for half a second or two."

"You're being rather cruel to me, don't you think?"

"Do you deserve better treatment?"

"Of _course_ I deserve better, I'm your partner. And your friend."

"Are you?"

The banging inside the condo stopped. Music suddenly blared behind the door.

"_Hey ain't it good to know that you've got a friend when people can be so cold? They'll hurt you and desert you. Well they'll take your soul if you let them, oh yeah, but don't you let them. You just call out my name, and you know wherever I am I'll come running to see you again. Winter, spring, summer, or fall, hey now, all you got to do is call and I'll be there, yes I will. You've got a friend."_

"Your condo is singing to me," Juliet sniffled.

"Roy Orbison?" Lassiter inquired.

"James Taylor."

"Hmm. I left Roy Orbison on the hi fi."

"Carlton, please believe me, I never meant to make you angry today. There's…something weighing on my mind that I really wanted to talk to you about, but I…guess I was too chicken. I took my troubles out on you and that was totally unfair. Please…_please _tell me we're still friends?"

A long silence. Juliet held her breath. "I…took a few frustrations out on you, too. Truce?"

She let out her breath and smiled. "Truce. Partner. Are you going to get that tooth taken care of?"

"Ah…not at the moment, no. I…haven't made an appointment yet."

"_Carlton. _Make an appointment."

"I will. I will."

"Where are you headed, if I might ask?"

"You may, I suppose. Carpinteria."

A beat. "Why?"

"My mother lives there."

"You're…going to your mother's? I hurt your feelings _that badly?"_ Juliet had only spoken to Irma Lassiter over the telephone one time, years ago, and had taken away the impression that Lassiter's apparent avoidance of his mother was perfectly justifiable. If she'd been nasty enough to send him home to Mother's house, she'd been a true bitch indeed.

"Relax, O'Hara. Mother called me this morning to ask if I could come over after work and fix a leak in the kitchen sink. I figured I'd get it out of the way early while she was still at her Monday afternoon Gun Club meeting. I'm in enough pain without falling prey to one of her harangues."

"Oh, okay. Well, I'll let you go, then, but you'd better make that appointment, all right? Or I'll come over with a pair of pliers."

"I'm about ready to let you. What was it you wanted to talk to me about?"

"What?"

"You said that you chickened out, back at the car. What did you really want to talk about?"

"Er…uh…we'll talk about it later, okay? Once you've had that tooth taken care of." _And I've had time to grow a spine._

"All right. See you tomorrow, O'Hara."

"Tomorrow you'd _better _be at the dentist, Mister."

"…Right. See you later, then."

"Bye, Carlton."


	6. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _Psych_ or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other Psych-Os like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

**Rating: **T

**Spoilers: T**hrough current episodes, particularly strong from _Heeeeere's Lassie _and _Shawn Rescues Darth Vader._

**A/N: **Althea, in this chapter, is represented by a wonderful lady of my acquaintance, mother of twenty-three, grandmother to eighty-four, great-grandmother to twelve. The briefly-flashed picture of Althea and Lassiter's mother in _This Episode Sucks _reminded me a little of her, mostly the hairstyle I think, and I felt after a lifetime of THAT sort of hard work (I'll repeat it: TWENTY-THREE KIDS), she deserved some props even if fictionally. I'm really the one who sings out loud in public places, though, which is actually how she and I became friends in the first place. (I'm also the one who says "fucky luckin'," not that you asked.)

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Six: Something Stupid<strong>

Lassiter had a key to his mother's duplex apartment but he saw the car in the drive and, once he mounted the steps to the front door, heard the sounds of Frank Sinatra from inside. Althea was home. He rang the bell.

"Just a minute," the woman's robust, perpetually cheerful voice rang out, muffled by the building. The music stopped and the door opened.

"Why Carlton, baby, I wasn't expecting you 'til late. You get off work early?" Althea Foy filled the entire doorframe from top to bottom, a startlingly youthful-looking seventy-odd year old black woman close to half a foot taller than Lassiter and three times as broad. She was probably slightly taller than Buzz McNab, in point of fact, though he didn't care to witness a meeting between the two in order to find out.

"Hello, Al. Yeah, I took off early."

Her eyes widened alarmingly. _"You_…took off early," she repeated. "You feeling all right, sweetie pie?"

"I'm fine, Al. Mom said there's a leak in the kitchen sink?"

"Come on in, honeybunch," she said, and stepped aside.

He headed for the little kitchenette and opened the cabinet under the sink, where he found the pipe was indeed leaking around the coupler just ahead of the U-bend. Althea brought out the toolbox kept in the broom closet by the refrigerator and he set to work with the pipe wrench. She watched him with her hands fisted on her generous hips.

"How's that little jailbird of yours?" she asked suddenly, and the wrench slipped. Lassiter growled out a mild profanity as he scraped his knuckles on the piping. "Uh huh. Thought so."

He sighed. "She spent her whole life committed to an all-consuming obligation to her brother," he said. "I can't blame her for wanting to cut loose a bit now that her sentence is nearing its end. I…don't cut loose. And she's a beautiful woman, she's got a lot of options open to her. I don't think she ever realized that before."

"She dumped you?"

"On Saturday."

She clucked her tongue sadly. "I know you handed that girl your heart. I'm sorry she was dumb enough to hand it back."

"It's not dumb. She's dating a _lawyer _now."

"A lawyer? You mean that funny-looking shyster you hired to defend her?" Althea said sharply.

"She thinks he was a public defender. I asked Hornstock not to tell her I paid his retainer."

"But _he_ knows you paid him. And he still stole your lady?"

"I…didn't tell him I had any particular personal interest in Marlowe," he admitted.

"You paid his wages. Man'd have to be ten different kinds of stupid not to realize what that meant."

"I'm not certain Adam Hornstock _isn't _ten different kinds of stupid, Al. But he's a good guy, for a lawyer. If Marlowe stays with him he'll treat her right. I'm glad of that."

Althea shook her head. "You know, first time I looked into those big blue eyes of yours I thought you were a heartbreaker for sure. I just didn't know then that it was always gonna be _your _heart that broke."

He finished with the loose coupler and crawled out from under the sink. "Yeah, well, I guess I was just born under a fucky luckin' star."

She held out her arms to him. "Give me some sugar, baby." He stood up and stepped into the hug, only a little uncomfortable with the embrace. His introduction to Althea Foy had not been auspicious, but that was a long time ago. He accepted her now, and her relationship with his mother, and actually liked her quite a lot. In some ways, perhaps, a little bit more than he liked his mom. Irma Lassiter had quite a lot of hypocrite in her personality, Althea Foy had none.

Apparently she was aware both of the run of his thoughts and the relative ease with which he accepted the physical familiarity - never easy for him, in any situation - because she suddenly said, "We come a long way from you telling your Mama and me to _Thelma and Louise _ourselves into the Pacific, haven't we?"

He winced. "Not my finest hour," he admitted. "I was…in shock."

"I understand that now. At the time I didn't know about your sister and her husband."

His older sister Caroline met and married a half-Latino named Raul Rodriguez five years before Irma Lassiter came to her eldest son's police academy graduation ceremony with her black lesbian lover. Irma had not been nearly as gracious to her daughter as she'd apparently expected her son to be to her. His mother's rabidly prejudiced objections to his sister's still evidently happy marriage had been only the most obvious example of the bigotry she'd displayed throughout his entire life, and her sudden "coming out" had been both shocking and, in light of every hateful message she'd pounded into his head during his childhood, more than a little affronting. He hadn't wanted to have to deal with the idea of his fifty-three year old mother being homosexual, of course, but most of his reaction had stemmed from a belated sense of sticking up for his sister and brother-in-law.

"Mom's…really good at making people really angry," he said at last. "Family trait."

Althea laughed. "Believe me, honey, I know all about it. Now tell me…what else is bothering you? There's something, I can tell. Something apart from that bad tooth you're nursing, instead of going to the dentist like any sensible person."

"Let me guess…you read that in my aura?"

She blinked. "Don't take this the wrong way, baby, but…what've you been smoking?"

"Sorry. I've got some…kooky neighbors."

"Doesn't everybody? I can tell you've got a toothache 'cause your jaw's a little swollen on one side and you look like you're in a lot of pain. As to the other…well, I no more think you'd take half a day off for a toothache than I think you'd take half a day off 'cause your girl left you high and dry at the start of the weekend."

He chuckled, but weakly. "Ever considered taking the DET, Al? You'd make a hell of a detective."

"So spill it, sweetie, or I'll tickle it out of you. What gives?"

He shrugged. "I…kind of got into it with O'Hara this afternoon. I guess she's dealing with her own personal shitstorm right now, although she wouldn't tell me what was going on, and somehow we ended up trading broadsides."

"O'Hara…that's that pretty little blonde girl they've got you partnered up with, right?"

"Er…yeah."

She crossed her massive, well-muscled arms - a hard-working woman, was Althea Foy, from her earliest days as a girl in southern Louisiana to the present day - across her monumental bosom. "I like that one. She's got brains and moxie _and_ good looks. Ever thought about asking her out?"

It was fortunate he wasn't in the process of taking a drink or her words would have caused an immediate spit-take. "Dear Sweet Lady Justice, _no."_

She cocked a doubtful eyebrow. "Why not? Don't you like her?"

"Well…sure I _like _her."

"But she's not your type? 'Cause I kind of thought you went for the skinny little blue-eyed blondes."

"Well, not exactly. I mean…"

"You're not _her_ type?"

"Well, no. I'm not. Not even close."

"She tell you that?"

He shrugged. "Not in so many words, no. But I've seen the type she goes for." _Short, spastic, slick and slightly greasy._ Although before Shawn Spencer and, maybe to a lesser extent, Declan Rand, he hadn't actually seen that she'd gone out for that type of guy at all. In fact, before Rand he would have said her type was tall, authoritative, athletic, maybe a little shy, sometimes even a little bit goofy-looking. One of the guys she'd dated, albeit desultorily at best, had ears even bigger than Lassiter's. And Cameron Luntz had been older…

Althea was shaking her head even as he pondered his own words. "Boy, you can't look at who a lady is dating and say that it means she'd never date _you_. You got to _ask, _honeybunch."

"The question is moot, Al. She's seeing someone."

The eyebrow was back up, although now it looked more conniving than quizzical. "Things change, sweetie pie. Things change."

His own eyebrow shot up. "Al, you're not suggesting I attempt to steal another man's girlfriend, are you?"

"All's fair in love and war, baby."

"Even war has rules, Al," Lassiter said. "Maybe a lot of warriors ignore them, but…I'm not that guy."

She shrugged one meaty shoulder. "Maybe you're not, but things still change, baby. Maybe you're not the guy who'd snatch away another man's honey but you can be ready to swoop in the minute he screws up enough to make her reconsider her taste in men."

He laughed out loud. "Al, I'm not much of a swooper, either."

"All right, Mister Negativity, come up with all kinds of reasons why you can't ask the girl on a date. But while you're knocking yourself down, why don't you do me a favor and hit the button on the stereo? I want my Frankie."

He walked over to the sound system and hit the play function. The Chairman of the Board's voice filled the little apartment.

"_I know I'd stand in line until you think you have the time to spend an evening with me, and if we go some place to dance, I know that there's a chance you won't be leaving with me. And afterwards we'd drop into a quiet little place and have a drink or two, and then I'd go and spoil it all by saying something stupid, like I love you."_

"Dance with me."

"Beg pardon?" Lassiter said.

"You heard me. I love this song, Nancy Sinatra not withstanding. I wanna dance."

"Al, I can't dance."

"Don't lie to me, boy - I know all about them tap lessons you were taking. Even if you couldn't, hell - I can't carry a tune in a bucket but that don't stop me from singing when I feel a song coming on."

This was partly true - Althea actually had rather a nice singing voice, but she did have a rather disconcerting habit of bursting into song in the oddest places, like the produce aisle at Kroger's. _Loud _song. The woman learned to sing, she claimed, on the driver's seat of a John Deere tractor, and that plus her obviously heroic lungs added up to a voice loud enough to turn heads in the parking lot. It used to embarrass the hell out of Lassiter if he happened to be in her presence when she started in, but eventually he'd learned to take it more or less in stride, along with her preference of introducing him as her son - occasionally, if she was in a Puckish mood, her _"really white _son." If he spent much more time with her, he suspected, he would be in serious danger of becoming "mellow." She grabbed his hand and pulled him into a waltz, though she did allow him to take the lead once she had him resigned to his fate.

"_I can see it in your eyes, that you despise the same old lies you heard the night before, and though it's just a line to you, for me it's true and never seemed so right before. I practice every day to find some clever lines to say to make the meaning come true, but then I think I'll wait until the evening gets late and I'm alone with you. The time is right, your perfume fills my head, the stars get red and oh, the night so blue…and then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid, like I love you. The time is right, your perfume fills my head, the stars get red and oh, the night so blue…and then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid, like I love you. I love you. I love you, I do."_

"Did you at least have the sense to apologize to that partner of yours?" Althea asked.

"Er…we called a truce," he said.

"That's not what I asked."

"Well, I guess I didn't…exactly…tell her I apologize. Or say I'm sorry. Which is the same thing, I guess, unless you say it at a funeral."

"_Tell her you're sorry," _she said severely. "A man that can't apologize after he finally pulls his head out of his ass is one sorry specimen."

"Okay, all right, I'll tell her."

"And get that tooth fixed."

"Yes, Ma'am." He snapped a rigid salute.

"You sassing me, boy?"

"No, Ma'am," he said meekly. Her mock-threatening gaze softened as she chuckled.

"Good boy. That's why you're my favorite. Don't tell your sisters." She glanced out the window to the street out front, vacant of either personal or official vehicle. "Your Mama will be home soon. You need a ride back to your place?"

"I can catch the bus back." She glared at him. "I _came _here on the bus, Al - it's not a big deal."

"You walked all the way here from the bus stop?"

"It's not that far."

"On a good day, maybe. On a day you got a toothache, a broken heart, and a troubled conscience? Come on, I'll drive you."


	7. Chapter 7

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _Psych_ or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other Psych-Os like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

**Rating: **T

**Spoilers: T**hrough current episodes, particularly strong from _Heeeeere's Lassie_

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Seven: You're So Vain<strong>

"_Hey Chief? I got in touch with Carlton and it's not as bad as I thought. He's got a toothache - I think it's an abscess. He's in a lot of pain but no immediate danger."_

"_That's a relief. Did you get him to make an appointment with a dentist?"_

"_I made him promise."_

"…_That's not going to be enough, O'Hara. You haven't known Carlton as long as I have so maybe you haven't had the opportunity to notice: Detective Lassiter. Hates. Doctors. Of any variety. Almost as much as he hates doctor's offices and hospitals. Oh, he'll _promise _to get treatment, if things are bad enough, and he'll probably even mean it, but he'll procrastinate. He'll procrastinate his way right into a long, skinny coffin if someone more sensible doesn't intervene. I don't care if you have to hogtie him and stuff him in the trunk, just get him to the dentist ASAP. _You_ make the appointment, don't leave it up to him."_

"…_Understood, Chief."_

- … - … -

With Chief Vick's unstated permission to play hooky in the interests of the fine art of Zen and Lassiter maintenance, Juliet left the station and drove her lime-green VW home to her condominium to let her fingers do the walking and find a dentist willing to take a new patient at the shortest possible notice. Carlton had beautiful teeth, which made his snide remark about "Little Miss Perfect Smile" just a little bit more affronting, so she guessed he _had_ a dentist, but if he was really so averse to making and keeping appointments then he might also be averse to 'fessing up to just who that dentist was, to keep her from making him go. So it was easier by far just to call around, claiming emergency - if his tooth was really abscessed then it wasn't a lie, and if she couldn't find a dentist she could drag him into the ER at the hospital to get him started on a regimen of antibiotics. There was always the off chance she'd find his actual dentist in the process.

On the way she pondered some things that puzzled her about that telephone conversation she'd had with him. What did he mean, exactly, when he said that his condo liked to redecorate itself? Despite the horrific nature of what had happened to him and the two previous inhabitants of unit five thirty-six, she'd been comforted to discover that it all had its roots in human nature - _abnormal _human nature, perhaps, but a _human_ cause nevertheless. The idea that the building - or unit five thirty-six at least - might actually be haunted was disturbing. She believed, to some extent, that such places existed, but _Carlton Lassiter _living in one? That beggared imagination.

Someone had been in the condo, that was the only answer. Marlowe was still in prison, so she doubted it was a woman - Carlton wasn't the cheating type, despite water cooler gossip about whether it was before or after his separation that he started sleeping with his last partner. And who had a prior history of sneaking into Lassiter's apartments and creating mayhem, apart from the woman who'd tried to run him out of Prospect Gardens?

Shawn Spencer, that's who.

If he was perpetuating the haunted condo trickery at Prospect Gardens, as a "joke" or otherwise, she was going to kill him.

Of course there was also the possibility that Shawn and Carlton were in some sort of collusion, working together to put one over on her. Or maybe Carlton actually _was_ in the condo, making all that racket, and only said he was still on the bus so that he wouldn't have to let her in. But no, she'd heard the distinct sounds of public transportation over the telephone, pneumatic wheezes of brakes and doors, the low rumble of a diesel engine, the animated and incomprehensible conversation of too many people packed in a small space. What she had not heard on her phone was the sound of furniture moving, or the song that had suddenly and inexplicably began to play the instant he'd questioned her friendship. And if that was _Shawn _doing that…well…his psychic routine had improved considerably.

Lost in thought, she noticed nothing strange about her condo when she finally pulled in. There was always the possibility, of course, that she wouldn't have noticed anyway, because he was damn good at covering his tracks. The black Norton motorcycle was nowhere to be seen. She unlocked her door and walked inside.

"Jules! You're home early!"

Shawn Spencer stood in her kitchen, dumb fat face a canvas of surprise. She felt herself grow cold as she looked at him, in her house without her permission, as usual headfirst in her refrigerator. It looked like he was making a pizza. "What…are you doing here, Shawn?" she said tightly.

"Well, I…wanted to make up for…whatever went wrong the other night, so I thought I'd surprise you by having dinner ready and waiting for you when you got home from work."

"Pizza."

"No, not just pizza," Shawn said with a big, dopey grin. _"Pineapple taco _pizza, your favorite."

"No, Shawn - _your _favorite. I personally have never much cared for taco pizza, even without pineapple, and I really can't stand it _with_. If you used those remarkable powers of observation you possess to some other end than making Carlton - and _I_, might I point out, since you seem to have failed to notice _that_, as well - look stupid, then you might have realized that at some point. How did you get in?"

He had the sense to look sheepish, at least. "My key."

"I never gave you a key, Shawn."

"I…had one made."

She held out her hand. "Give it."

"Jules, please, just…give me a chance."

"I _gave_ you a chance, Shawn, more or less against my better judgment. I let you charm me and drag me around by the collar and you know what? It's over. End of story. Now give me the damn key, and get out of my house."

"What did I do?" he pleaded. "Just…please, I want to understand."

"What did you do? Maybe what you should be asking is what _didn't_ you do, Shawn. You didn't respect me, you didn't listen to me, you never once took so much as half a step out of your comfortable little Peter Pan existence to make _who I am _feel like I'm special to you. Well you want to know something, Shawn? I never liked Peter Pan. I always rooted for Captain Hook. At least he had a little _depth. _You're as shallow as a pizza pan, and you don't really spend a whole lot of time thinking or caring about anyone other than yourself. God, Shawn - _Carlton _knows more about who I am and what I like, and he doesn't generally give a damn about that kind of thing."

Shawn snorted. "Lassie? Lassie wouldn't notice if you showed up at the station with your hair on fire, unless that were in direct violation of California police code."

"_Carlton _would notice, although if my hair was on fire for _fashion's_ sake he wouldn't say anything about it. _You_ I think might very well miss the observation altogether, if there was an open bag of Doritos anywhere in the building."

"Ouch. Jules, that's low."

"You want to know what low is? Low is all the times you jab at Carlton's looks. If I'd been keeping track in the past year alone of all the times you've twitted him on his hair, his ears, his build…just the things you say _behind his back_, Shawn, not even bringing in everything you say to his _face_…truthfully I'm not sure I could count that high. And then of course there's all the _professional_ humiliation you think you have to heap on him, all the times you think you have to tell him what a terrible detective he is. Let me tell you something, Shawn - Carlton is a better detective than you'll ever be, because he actually _cares_ about the work. It's not something he does just to show everyone how wonderful and magnificent he is."

"Jules, come on - Lassie is one of the most shamelessly self-promoting people I know."

"No, Shawn. Carlton likes to get a little praise and recognition for a job well done - who doesn't? And he wants to keep his career on an upward path, and at this point that means he needs to put himself in the public eye because there really isn't anything higher he can get to without politics getting into it. But he doesn't start hopping up and down like an idiot on a pogo stick just because there's a camera pointing in someone's face. He doesn't try to step into anyone _else's_ spotlight, either. Not like someone else I could name."

"Well if he's so wonderful then maybe you should have dated _him," _Shawn said, in a huff.

"By this point I think I'd have been better off."

That actually seemed to rattle him. He rallied valiantly, but she could see she had him on the ropes now. "What, you think _Lassie_ would have taken you to a wine tasting or for a hot air balloon ride? If you dated him, you'd never make it through dinner without arresting somebody."

"Really? You're going to make that argument? Are you really that stupid, Shawn? Have you forgotten _why_ you took me to a wine tasting and hot air balloon ride? Were not _both_ activities to which you were violently opposed _until they became part of an investigation?_ Yes, Carlton is intensely dedicated to his profession, Shawn, which doesn't bother me much since I am, too. But if he took me for a 'romantic weekend getaway' and I mentioned to him that I would like to take a hot air balloon ride? I _don't_ think he'd tell me to settle for floating in the hotel pool on an inflatable orca. At the very least I'm sure he'd make some _genuine effort _to find a mutually acceptable compromise. All you did that whole weekend, apart from lie to me and obsess about a stolen toy, was complain about everything _I _wanted to do.

"I've been thinking a _lot_ about you and I lately, Shawn," she continued relentlessly, "this whole messed-up relationship from start to finish. Frankly I can't even figure out why I ever started dating you in the first place. When I think back on all that creepy 'flirting'…blatant sexual innuendos right in my _workplace_. Sometimes I think what I _should_ have done is hit you with harassment charges. But I let you get away with it because you were silly and you could be sweet and you were cute…I'm sick of cute, Shawn. Cute gets old in a hurry when it's appended to a _man_ and not a kitten."

"Well, if…that's how you feel, then I…guess there's really nothing more to say, is there?" Shawn said. He sounded crestfallen but also struggled mightily to gain some sort of high ground of asperity. "Maybe Marlowe will get her sentence extended for rampaging vampirism and give you a chance to steal Lassie's heart, if you can find it under all that chest hair."

He started out past her but she stopped him. "Key."

He fished it out of his pocket and slapped it into her palm. He left, then, and it seemed like the whole house brightened as though the sun had suddenly broken through a covering of clouds. Juliet closed and locked the door - even though she didn't really trust him not to have another copy of her key - and sank into her armchair with a sigh. She hadn't even gotten to start on finding Lassiter a dentist, and now she had a huge mess to clean up in her kitchen. She needed to take a moment to unwind. She reached over to her Ipod dock and hit play.

"_You walked into the party like you were walking onto a yacht, your hat strategically tipped below one eye, your scarf it was apricot. You had one eye in the mirror as you watched yourself gavotte, and all of the girls dreamed that they'd be your partner, they'd be your partner, and…you're so vain, you probably think this song is about you. You're so vain, I bet you think this song is about you, don't you? Don't you? Don't you?"_

Good Lord, leave it to the Random function to pull up such an apropos song in the wake of yet another round with Shawn Spencer's rampaging ego. What was it about music lately? Some strange force seemed to be using it to manipulate her feelings…although truthfully music always had that power. It just seemed a little more potent lately, somehow.

_Well if Lassie's so wonderful, maybe you should have dated him_, Shawn's voice said in her head. Well, she didn't know about that, but she did know she would have been better off. Carlton was…Carlton, and not exactly a perfect example of…of…_human,_ but he had his good side, much as he tried to hide it under the bluster. Sometimes she wondered exactly what had happened to him to make him so…guarded. Maybe it was just the divorce. He was the type of man who'd take such a thing quite hard, not that she hadn't seen the evidence of exactly _how_ hard firsthand. He was a problem-solver, a fixer, and his inability to fix the deepest relationship of his life was a blow to the pride as well as the heart.

_I don't trust anybody, O'Hara, but damned if I didn't trust you._

And she'd broken that trust. For Shawn Spencer. It was too late, now, but she kicked herself for it. She'd always told herself that however things worked out with Shawn - and had she ever expected them to work out to a fairy tale ending? She hoped she'd never entertained such a naïve expectation - that she wouldn't regret it, but she _did, _she regretted it wholeheartedly now. If she was able to salvage her partnership in the wake of this mess, that would be the best she could walk away with. Thankfully it seemed Lassiter was more or less willing to let it go, provided she didn't go dragging it up out of the crypt.

Well, the first step in repairing the damage was in repairing the abscess. She hoisted herself out of the chair, turned off the music, and pulled her telephone book out of the end table and set to work.


	8. Chapter 8

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _Psych_ or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other Psych-Os like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

**Rating: **T

**Spoilers: T**hrough current episodes, particularly strong from _Heeeeere's Lassie_

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Eight: Don't Stop<strong>

"_Al, do you believe in…ghosts?"_

"_Say what now, sugar?"_

"_Ghosts. Poltergeists, I suppose. Haunted houses. That kind of thing."_

"_Carly, I grew up forty miles from the Big Easy. Not believing in ghosts was a luxury we couldn't afford. Why you asking? I thought that all turned out to be some crazy lady."_

"_Yeah, yeah it was. But…gosh, I don't know. Place is still a little bit…different…from what I'm used to. Maybe it's just residual…"_

"_Spill it."_

"_It's nothing, Al, it's just…"_

"_Come on, now, don't leave me hanging."_

"_Well, things…move. On their own. And O'Hara called me from there this afternoon and she said that she heard a James Taylor song playing. I would think it was an electrical malfunction of some kind, but the only sound system near the door is the hi fi in the living room, and I had a Roy Orbison album on the turntable. And I don't even have James Taylor on CD, so I guess that rules out the stereo in my bedroom, 'cause I haven't been able to pull in FM radio since I moved in. The entire condo seems to be an airwave dead zone."_

"_Uh huh. Well I got a perfectly reasonable explanation for you, sweetie pie."_

"_That's a relief, Al. What is it?"_

"_You got a ghost, baby."_

"…_Gee. Why didn't I think of that?"_

"_You did."_

- … - … -

The first thing he did when he stepped inside unit five thirty-six was check the record player. James Taylor, with the arm stopped in the blank groove between "You've Got a Friend" and the next song, "Carolina In my Mind." A quick check of the neatly alphabetized albums stored in the hi fi's cabinet showed that Roy Orbison was in its proper cover and place, as though he'd put it there himself - which he knew he had not. _You got a ghost, baby._ Fortunately a considerate ghost who knew the value of keeping a vintage music library in proper order. Hopefully it also knew about gripping from the edges and not getting phantasmagoric fingerprints all over the grooves…

He did wonder, briefly, if the drugs he'd inhaled, perhaps coupled with the aftereffects of chloroform and salvia from earlier in this same bizarre year, hadn't given him some lingering brain damage.

He flopped down onto the couch. Life used to be so _simple_, before ghosts, crazy ladies who sneak drugs into apartment ventilation systems, blood-stealing girlfriends, lying partners, fake psychics…divorces…marriages…mothers "coming out" at graduations…crap. Okay, maybe life had _never _been simple. But it would be nice to have a quiet moment to pretend it was. Maybe while he was dreaming he could pretend there was a moment in his past, present, or future where he could see a little unfettered happiness.

He must have fallen asleep - not long, only a few minutes, tops - but there was the definite and disorienting sense of suddenly _waking_ when he hadn't first realized he'd been sleeping.

"_Why not think about times to come and not about all the things that you've done? If your life was bad to you, well just think of what tomorrow will do. And don't stop thinking about tomorrow. Don't stop, 'cause it'll soon be here. It'll be even better than before, 'cause yesterday's gone, yesterday's gone."_

He shot to his feet and yanked the needle off the record with so much force he nearly pulled the arm off the turntable altogether. Fleetwood Mac. He checked the neat line of album covers. James Taylor was secure in its thin cardboard sleeve. _This is getting ridiculous._

"Look, you got something to say? Say it," he said out loud, aware of how crazy it was to be talking to a condominium. He was also aware, somewhat belatedly, that the condo or ghost or whatever was apparently quite capable of talking and doing rather well at it, thanks to his extensive record collection. He ran his hands through his hair in distraction, making it stand out wildly, and went to the kitchen for a dose of ibuprofen.

While he was swallowing two orange pills the music came back on. Stevie Wonder this time.

"_I just called to say I love you…I just called to say how much I really care…"_ Crap on a cracker. He hoped that wasn't an editorial comment - he had enough problems without dealing with a ghost-crush.

"What's that supposed to mean?" he asked aloud. He heard the wince-inducing scratch of a needle being dragged across a record in the wrong direction. Okay, he and the ghost were going to have to have a little chat about the care and handling of vinyl. The music started again. Brenda Lee, this time.

"_I'm sorry…so sorry…that I was such a fool…"_

Okay, that could have been an apology for being creepy although it was _way_ too late for that, but he suddenly thought that both songs were leading him to an entirely different conclusion.

"Are you trying to tell me to call O'Hara and apologize, like Al told me to?" he said.

The music stopped. Either he did not possess a record to express an answer to that question or the ghost felt it had gotten its point across. _Great, now I'm being nagged about my manners by a poltergeist._

He pulled out his cell phone. Abasing himself was preferable to more musical conversation with ethereal beings. Maybe this was all a loneliness-induced hallucination.

She answered on the third ring, which probably meant he'd caught her in the middle of something. Damn.

"Detective O'Hara."

"O'Hara, it's Lassiter…"

"Oh, hey, Carlton, I was just about to call you. I made an appointment for you with Dr. Igbald for tomorrow morning at nine thirty. He was the only dentist I found who was able to get you in so quickly."

"Er…you made the appointment for me?"

"Chief asked me to," Juliet admitted. "She said you'd procrastinate."

"…I probably would have, actually. In fact, I guess I kind of…was."

"_She's got your number," _Juliet sing-songed. "And oh geez, I commandeered this phone call, didn't I? What did you have on your mind?"

_I just called to say I love you,_ Stevie Wonder piped up unbidden in his head. "I, uh, just wanted to apologize for what happened today. To _actually_ apologize, which I realized after the fact that I didn't really do. I was an ass. Which I expect you're used to, by now, but that doesn't mitigate the offense."

"It was my fault, Carlton. I was deliberately pushing your buttons just because _I_ felt oogy."

"Oogy?" He shook his head to clear it. "Even if you were, that doesn't mean I had to rise to the bait. I'm…very good at being really mean. Family characteristic."

"_I _was being mean, I - "

"Juliet, as far as I can determine you are incapable of being genuinely mean. Now will you please stop fox-trotting all over my apology and let me apologize?"

"Fox-trotting?"

"Two-stepping?"

She giggled. "I like that one. Okay, I'll stop Tennessee waltzing on your apology."

"Oh, that was a good one. Much better than what I came up with in case two-stepping didn't cut it."

"Which was?"_"Mambo Italiano_-ing."

She laughed out loud and he smiled. "Carlton, I have something I want to tell you," she said. "It's what I really wanted to talk to you about this afternoon. I think I finally have the guts to just have out with it. But not over the phone, I'd much rather be sure it's a…private…conversation. Mind if I come over?"

He wondered how private she'd think his condo was if he told her about the conversation he'd had just before he called her. And he wondered how long it would take her to send for emergency services to take him to a mental hospital if he did. "Yeah, sure, if you want to," he said.

"Great. I'll be there in a few, 'kay? Bye."

"Bye." He rang off.

"_What a dream I had, dressed in organdy, clothed in crinoline of smoky burgundy,"_ Art Garfunkel sang from the hi fi.

"I don't know what you're implying but I don't care for the suggestion, thank you very much," he growled.


	9. Chapter 9

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _Psych_ or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other Psych-Os like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

**Rating: **T

**Spoilers: T**hrough current episodes, particularly strong from _Heeeeere's Lassie._

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Nine: Queen of my Heart<strong>

Juliet arrived in short order. He invited her in, caught the grin she was repressing, and asked what was funny.

"Nothing," she said in evident alarm. "Nothing's funny, Carlton, just…your hair…"

"What about it?"

"It's a little…messy."

Crap on a cracker. He'd forgotten to put it back in order after his frustrated tugging. "Dammit."

"It doesn't look bad," she hastened to assure him, "it's just not the way I normally see you. I like it, actually, it's cute."

He grimaced. "I don't like _cute," _he said. "Well, if you're coming in, come in."

He gestured her to a seat on the couch. At that moment the hi fi blared into life.

"_And the Queen is in England, the King is in Spain. My love for you, it's still the same. You know that I want you 'til death do us part. You know that you are the queen of my heart."_

Juliet looked at him quizzically. Lassiter, for his part, looked like a deer caught in headlights. "What song is that?" she asked.

"Er…'Queen of my Heart,' Hank Williams, Jr.," he stammered. "It's, uh…an electrical problem, old building, bad wiring, you know…I'm having a guy come out and take a look at it. Damn hi fi keeps turning itself on."

He launched himself at the cabinet and jerked the plug out of the wall. "There. Problem solved."

"Is that why I heard music in here this afternoon?" she asked. "Electrical malfunction?"

"Yeah."

"But…you said that you'd left a Roy Orbison album on the hi fi," she pointed out. "What I heard was very definitely James Taylor."

He shrugged. "Hey, so I forgot I changed the record. I'm getting old, you know."

"Carlton, you don't forget _anything," _she stressed gently.

"Oh? Well. I forgot _that."_

Shifty eyes, twitchy fingers, nervous lip…yeah, definitely a bad liar. Which was hardly a bad thing, but what was there to lie about here? She patted the sofa cushion next to her. "Sit down, Carlton, you're dancing around so much you're making me nervous. You look _demented."_

"_Crazy. I'm crazy for feeling so lonely…and I'm crazy, crazy for feeling so blue." _It was Willie Nelson singing, not Patsy Cline, though he had both singers' versions on vinyl. Neither was on any album with Hank Williams, Jr. Juliet looked at the hi fi with wide eyes.

"Didn't you just…unplug that?" she asked.

"Must've been the wrong outlet," he said in a strangled, squeaky voice. He grabbed the record off the turntable, heedless of the delicate grooves, and stuffed it willy-nilly into a random spot in the cabinet. "Kind of annoying, that electrical malfunction, isn't it?"

"Are you sure that's what it is?" she asked. "I mean, that was Willie Nelson. What album was that - was that _Always On my Mind? _What happened to Hank Williams, Jr.?"

"Compilation album," he lied desperately. "A mix of country singers."

She nodded, undeceived, and gestured at the seat again. "Come on, you need to relax. What I've got to say…well, it's probably going to make you very happy, actually. You'll be well within your rights to gloat."

He sat, on the furthest edge of the cushion at the farthest end of the couch. It was only a loveseat, though, so he couldn't get too far from her. She looked at him with a smile on her lips, because damn, it was so very _Carlton_ to try and keep a distance of propriety between them when they were alone in his condo sitting together on a two-seat sofa, but the more she looked the less she liked the disheveled hair, at least in conjunction with his frantic expression. It reminded her too strongly of the way he'd looked sitting on the front steps of the building, hurt and half-drugged and more than half in shock, nakedly vulnerable in a way she'd never seen before.

_If you could have one thing in this world that would make you feel better right now, what would it be?_ she'd asked, and whatever he'd said she would have tried to make it happen.

_I wouldn't say no to a sloppy joe, _had been his response. She smiled at the memory even though it hurt a little, too. She reached out and ran both hands through his hair so that it fell into a semblance of its usual order. Much better. The texture of his hair surprised her a bit. She'd expected it to be coarse and heavy, but while it was certainly heavy it was oddly silken in her fingers. It reminded her of the four long bolts of authentic oriental silk her brother Ewan had sent her from Hong Kong a long time ago, when she was in the midst of a Butterick enthusiasm. They were beautiful fabrics in Easter pastels, pink and orange and green and robin's egg blue, patterned with lithe, swooping dragons. The silk wasn't like the glossy, gauzy stuff she was used to - it was as heavy as anything she'd ever felt in the stiffened folds of a satin prom gown but it was still perfectly soft and luxurious to the touch.

She'd never used the silk, afraid to mar the beauty of the raw fabric with her clumsy, amateur sewing skills.

"What are you doing, O'Hara?" Lassiter asked at last, and she realized she still had her fingers in his hair. She pulled away with a blush.

"Just fixing your hair," she said. "It looks about right, now."

"Thank you," he said, only a little uncomfortably. "Do I have a smudge on my face? Perhaps next you'll be giving me spittle baths."

She laughed. "Sorry. I just didn't want you looking like…like you did after…"

He cleared his throat pointedly. "So, what did you want to talk to me about?"

"Oh, yeah. Well…" She took a deep, fortifying breath. "I broke up with Shawn."

Any reaction Lassiter might have had to that news was forestalled by the hi fi, which suddenly blared "The Liberty Bell March" at top volume. He dove over the back of the couch and tore the arm right off the record player. He picked himself up off the floor and came back around to sit on the far end of the loveseat again. He held the needle arm in both hands and turned it round and round.

"You broke your hi fi," Juliet pointed out.

"Not a problem. I'm thinking of getting rid of it anyway. Defective."

"Why would a John Philip Sousa march be on a country music compilation?" she asked.

"I dunno. Record exec was a Monty Python fan?" he suggested. "So. You ended it with Spencer, eh? That's…that's too bad."

"Is that what you _really_ think?" she asked.

"I'm sorry about it if you are," he said. He was very carefully not looking at her, and he still turned the needle arm over and over in his long-fingered hands.

"Wow. I, uh…guess I didn't expect this," she said. "I thought you'd crow a little, you know, tell me you told me so, gloat over Shawn's downfall…"

"That would be rather petty of me, wouldn't it?" he said mildly. She couldn't tell if he was really responding to her by the way he was staring at nothing and turning that needle arm.

She scootched closer to him and put her arm around his shoulders. "Carlton, are you okay? You look so rattled. You didn't hurt yourself, diving over the couch like that, did you?"

"Hmm? Oh, no, no, I'm fine," he said. "So it's over with Spencer, then. Finito. Down for the count. Rung down the curtain. Uh…are you okay with that?"

"With the fact that the relationship is over, or with your oddball synonyms for 'over?'"

"Either or. Both."

She smiled. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm okay with that. Shawn isn't, of course. In fact, I'm still not sure he knows it's really over, even though I spelled it out for him pretty clearly when I caught him in my house messing up my kitchen shortly before you called me."

"So wait, you ended it just this afternoon?" he said, for the first time showing some sign of lucidity. "I thought you wanted to talk about it this morning."

"I _did," _Juliet said. "I ended it with him on Saturday. He just thought he could win me back by baking me a hideous pineapple taco pizza for supper tonight."

Lassiter jerked. "Saturday?" he said blankly. "You broke up with him on _Saturday?"_

"Yeah. Why?"

"Oh. Nothing," he said numbly. Part of him wanted to tell her what happened to _him_ on Saturday, but another part, the part of him that kept his heart guarded up until alcohol lowered his inhibitions and defenses, warned him against making the confession. "Pineapple taco pizza, eh? That sounds…utterly revolting."

"It's worse, believe me," she said. "And the sad part is, he honestly thought it was my favorite pizza. I actually feel kind of sorry for Shawn. He's so bright, and so quick, but there are some things I just don't think he'll ever be able to understand."

She hugged him. "I hope Marlowe knows how lucky she is," she said. "She's getting one heck of a good guy."

He jerked completely out of her embrace and stood up. He dropped the needle arm onto the floor and paced with his hands jammed deep into his pants' pockets. "Marlowe broke up with me," he admitted at last. He leaned against the doorframe leading into the dining room. "On Saturday."

Her eyes widened and she gaped at him in utter dismay. "Oh, Carlton, I'm so sorry," she managed to say at last. "God, no wonder you've been so upset. What happened?"

"She decided to be a little adventurous," he said. "After all, her sentence is almost complete, and for the first time in her life, I think, the future is truly hers. And Adam Hornstock asked her out."

"Adam - the lawyer _you hired for her?"_

"She doesn't know that I hired him," he explained patiently.

She stood up. "Carlton, I'm so sorry it didn't work out. You were so happy, and I just…I really, _really _wanted that for you."

"Yeah. Me too."

Distantly, she heard music start to play. _"Well, you done done me, and you bet I felt it. I tried to be chill, but you're so hot that I melted. I fell right through the cracks, now I'm trying to get back. Before the cool done run out, I'll be giving it my bestest, and nothing's gonna stop me but Divine Intervention. I reckon it's again my turn to win some or learn some, but I won't hesitate no more, no more, it can not wait. I'm yours."_

"Is that…is that Jason Mraz?" she asked incredulously.

"Cee…CD player, in the bedroom," he stammered. "Elec - "

" - Trical malfunction, right right," Juliet finished. "I thought you couldn't stomach pop music?"

"I like some of it," he admitted, "and Mraz has kind of a…an eclectic thing going on. A little jazz influence, gospel, this and that…"

She nodded. "Well, I am really, _really_ sorry about Marlowe." She stepped forward and hugged him, arms tight about his waist and her cheek pressed hard against his shirtfront.

"I, er…thank you, O'Hara," he said, and gently disengaged her. "But I'm really okay. And if I'm really okay and you're really okay, no sympathy necessary, right? Right."

Suddenly a new song pealed out of the bedroom at top volume. _"Don't be stupid, you know I love you. Don't be ridiculous, you know I need you. Don't be absurd, you know I want you. Don't be impossible, I'm mad about you. I can't live without you. I'm crazy about you. Don't be stupid, you know I love you."_

"Now, I know there isn't a compilation album in hell that has _Jason Mraz _together with _Shania Twain," _Juliet said. "What's going on here, Carlton?"

"It's a party mix," he invented wildly. "Burned it off the computer. Wow, look at the time. You'd better be going, don't you think?" He pushed her toward the door.

"All right, all right, I'll go. But Carlton…?"

"Yeah?""If you need to talk, about Marlowe, about…_anything," _she said with a significant glance in the direction of the source of the music still blaring angrily through the condo, "you know I'm here for you, right? You've got my number, call me. Or just…just come by my apartment. Anytime."

She left, and Lassiter addressed the now silent condominium. "I know you think you're helping me or something," he said, "but you're really _not."_


	10. Chapter 10

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _Psych_ or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other Psych-Os like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

**Rating: **T

**Spoilers: T**hrough current episodes, particularly strong from _Heeeeere's Lassie._

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Ten: Stupid Girls<strong>

Juliet slid into a chair across from Chief Karen Vick's desk and waited for the woman to acknowledge her.

"Detective O'Hara, can I help you?" Vick asked. "I trust you've taken care of our bear with a toothache?"

"I set up an appointment for him at nine-thirty tomorrow morning, Chief," she said. "I'd like to drive him there myself, to make certain he goes, and just in case the doctor gives him a shot or a prescription for something strong. I don't know if we'll need the whole day or not, though. If the doc just gives him a prescription for amoxicillin and some ibuprofen he'll probably want to come to work afterwards."

"I'll put you both down for the day and if you can make it in then great," Vick said. "…Is there something else?"

Juliet hesitated. "Lassiter's condo is haunted," she blurted. Chief Vick blinked twice, then burst out laughing.

"O'Hara, I…what on earth?" she asked.

"I'm serious, Chief," Juliet insisted. "I went over there earlier this afternoon to track him down but he wasn't there - but there was still a lot of noise in there, like loud banging. And then music. Music that was perfectly appropriate to the conversation I was having with him over the phone. And I was just there now, talking to him about…some personal matters…_and the same thing kept happening_. Completely disparate songs kept playing on his record player, even after he'd unplugged it, and when he broke the arm off of the thing they started playing on his CD player! He was seriously freaked out, Chief, but he kept trying to play it off as an electrical malfunction."

"I'm not sure I understand, O'Hara," Chief Vick said. "Music popping on and off constitutes evidence of supernatural events?"

"You weren't there, Chief, you'd understand if you had been. First of all it was James Taylor, see? 'You've Got a Friend.' It came on the _minute_ I told Carlton that I was his friend, and he asked me if I was sure of that. The _very second, _Chief, like it had been all queued up and waiting. Then when I showed up later, I came in and before we'd even had a chance to talk it was a song called 'Queen of my Heart.' I wasn't familiar with it, but the lyrics were something about a love confession. He practically fell all over himself to unplug the hi fi. Then I said that he looked a little demented and 'Crazy' popped on. _And he took the record off the turntable and put it away_, and as _soon_ as I told him that I broke up with Shawn the damn thing started playing 'The Liberty Bell March,' you know - the _Monty Python's Flying Circus _theme song? It started playing! I ask you, Chief, how did a song start playing when _nobody_ put a record on? There was a record on the turntable afterward, I checked. _Where did it come from?"_

"Woah, wait a minute, O'Hara…you told him you broke up with Spencer? When was this?"

"Just a few minutes ago, Chief."

"No, I mean, when did you break up with Spencer?"

"Oh. Saturday."

"Saturday. And today, Monday, you're alone with Lassiter in his apartment, playing love songs on his hi fi."

It was Juliet's turn to blink. "No, Chief - the songs were just _playing, _we weren't playing them. Anyway, as I was saying, it started to play 'The Liberty Bell March,' and Carlton actually ripped the needle arm right off. And we talked a little bit, and I mentioned something about Marlowe, about how lucky she was to have a good guy like him, and that's when he told me that she broke it off with him. On Saturday. And I expressed my sympathies and the next thing I know, a song called 'I'm Yours' is playing on his CD player in the bedroom. And I gave him a hug, and he pushed me away, and Shania Twain started singing 'Don't Be Stupid.' It's a _ghost, _Chief, it _has_ to be."

"Marlowe broke up with him. On Saturday. And you hugged him. On Monday."

"Chief. Yes. What?"

"O'Hara…"

"_What?"_

Chief Vick closed her eyes and shook her head. "Nothing, O'Hara. Look, haunted, not haunted, either way it's not really police business, now is it? If Carlton is bothered by it then he's free to hire TAPS to look into it for him, or move out. And I'm not going to _make_ any of this police business as long as I don't see any problems evolving between you two on the job. Just…take it easy on him, okay? He's…_fragile."_

Juliet gazed in wonder at the Chief. "Er…okay, I…I will," she promised in bemusement.

"If I might ask, is your breakup with our consultant going to create any issues regarding police business?" Vick asked.

"I can't speak for Shawn, Chief, but I have no intention of allowing it to affect _me_ professionally," Juliet said honestly. "I'm still perfectly willing to work with Psych when called upon to do so."

Vick nodded. "That's good to hear, O'Hara. If I might address the issue on a personal level, for a moment, might I ask why the relationship ended? I was under the impression the two of you were getting along rather well in that regard."

"Not…as well as I pretended, Chief," Juliet admitted reluctantly. "I don't know why, but I guess I kept expecting him to…to _change_. To _grow up."_

"O'Hara, every woman spends at least a portion of every relationship hoping her partner will suddenly grow up. Men never do, not completely."

"Some men do," Juliet said. "More than Shawn ever will, at least."

"I won't argue with you on that."

Juliet hesitated, lingering in the chair. "I just…I feel sort of…_stupid_, Chief. For letting myself get drawn into his shtick. For letting him charm me, I guess. I put everything I really care about in jeopardy over a _guy, _something I always thought I was much too smart to do. I broke Carlton's trust, I'm sure I made things difficult for you…I just…you know, I always watched girls in high school fawning all over their boyfriends, letting their grades slip or running off and getting pregnant, or just following the boys around like robot puppies with no minds of their own, and I looked _down _on them for that. I thought I was better than they were because I kept my chin up and my nose clean and worked toward my goals. And now I find out that maybe I'm not so much smarter than them after all."

"O'Hara, I'm not sure what you want me to tell you," Vick said honestly. "Everyone makes mistakes, particularly where the heart is concerned. It doesn't mean you're stupid just because you took a chance on the wrong guy. It just…means you're human, I guess."

Juliet pondered that for a minute. "Yeah. Yeah, Chief, you're right. Thanks. I feel a little bit better."

"Good. Now why don't you go home, or…wherever…and just relax? We've been worried about how Carlton is feeling but your feelings are important to consider, too, and today's been a rough day for all involved, I think. And Juliet?"

Juliet turned back at the door. "Yes, Chief?"

"For what it's worth, and speaking woman-to-woman, a more…_mature_…man is almost always the better choice. There are no guarantees, but…well, I suppose it's always worth a shot, isn't it? Provided you can keep the personal and the professional…balanced."

Another moment where Juliet was left wondering if the Chief weren't implying something of which she was unaware. "Thanks, Chief," she said anyway. "I'll keep that in mind."

She left the station, with a wave for Buzz McNab who had just come in off of patrol, and hopped into her little bug. The stereo came on with the key.

"_Stupid girls…stupid girls, stupid girls. Maybe if I act like that, that guy will call me back. Porno paparazzi girl - I don't wanna be a stupid girl. Maybe if I act like that, flipping my blonde hair back, push up my bra like that - I don't wanna be a stupid girl,"_ P!nk sang. Juliet punched the off button with a nervous giggle. She really hoped it was just Lassiter's condo that was haunted.


	11. Chapter 11

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _Psych_ or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other Psych-Os like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

**Rating: **T

**Spoilers: T**hrough current episodes, particularly strong from _Heeeeere's Lassie._

**A/N: **Sorry for the glut: I would blame it on the weekend and lack of access, but actually I wrote the last four chapters just on Saturday.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Eleven: Go Down Gambling<strong>

Lassiter was sitting at the kitchen table with his head in his hands when he heard the broken, unplugged, recordless hi fi start playing.

"_Felt this way yesterday, and today I'm still hurting, yeah, hurting. Time goes by, right on by, and I, I keep hurting, yeah, hurting."_ Lassiter got up and walked into the living room with the head-cocked incredulous posture he often adopted when approaching something ludicrous and unbelievable, usually perpetrated by Shawn Spencer. Plug? In the socket. Roy Orbison record? On the turntable. Needle arm? Intact.

_I wonder how quickly the _Ghost Hunters _people can get here, _he thought, unaware that at that very moment Chief Vick was telling Detective O'Hara that he was free to call in The Atlantic Paranormal Society if he wanted to.

"What? Are you sympathizing or are you expecting an apology? All right, then, all right. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I…ripped your arm off," he said, feeling only a little bit silly at this point. "But don't you think you were being just a little bit…pushy? Not to mention completely off base. I mean, honestly, 'The Liberty Bell March?' I'll be honest with you, on any other day if O'Hara had told me she'd broken up with Spencer I'd have been turning cartwheels, but 'The Liberty Bell March?' It's a bit much."

He blinked - no more than that - and in the half second his eyes were closed the record changed. _"Well excuuuuuuuse me," _Steve Martin said from the recording of a comedy album.

"Just…you know, back off, okay? I don't know who or what you are but I really don't…mind…the fact that you're here, but don't start messing around with my personal life, all right? I don't know if you were reading something off of me or what, but it's just that Althea was trying to get me to start something I didn't want. I don't even think about O'Hara that way."

He turned away to punctuate that this was his final word on the subject, and the harsh music of his one and only metal album rang out. _"You're a liar, filthy liar. You're a liar. You…you…you…you fucking liar."_

"Hey! Don't _make _me call for an exorcist. I know one who'd be here in twenty minutes, tops."

The music stopped. A moment or two later Ben E. King started to sing. _"When the night has come, and the land is dark, and the moon is the only light we'll see, no I won't be afraid, oh I won't be afraid just as long as you stand, stand by me."_

Lassiter sat down on the couch and looked over the back of it at the hi fi cabinet. "All right, no exorcists. Provided you give me a little peace. What are you, anyway? Or am I addressing a _who?"_

Nothing. "Can't tell me? Is that because I don't have any music that fits, or is it because you can't change the record when I'm looking? I'll look away." He turned his head obediently. In the half of a second Steve Miller began to sing.

"_Some people call me the space cowboy, yeah, some call me the gangster of love. Some people call me Maurice, 'cause I speak of the pompatus of love. People talkin' 'bout me, baby, say I'm doing you wrong, doing you wrong. Well, don't you worry, baby, don't worry, 'cause I'm right here, right here, right here, right here at home. 'Cause I'm a picker, I'm a grinner, I'm a lover, and I'm a sinner. I play my music in the sun. I'm a joker, I'm a smoker, I'm a midnight toker…I sure don't want to hurt no one. I'm a picker, I'm a grinner, I'm a lover, and I'm a sinner. I play my music in the sun. I'm a joker, I'm a smoker, I'm a midnight toker…I get my lovin' on the run."_

"Ah. Informative," Lassiter said, with a sage nod. "So what do I call you, then? The Joker? The Space Cowboy? Maurice?"

"_Whenever you call me, I'll be there. Whenever you wahnt me, I'll be there. Whenever you need me, I'll be there. I'll be around."_

"I'll take that to mean 'Knock yourself out.'" He lay his head back against the cushions and stretched his long legs out. "Maurice it is, then, until you tell me otherwise. Now if you don't mind, I think I'll take a nap. I haven't slept for shit in days and I'm whipped."

He closed his eyes. There was a few minutes of silence, and then, almost tentatively despite the raucous melody, Blood Sweat and Tears began to play.

"_Born a natural loser, I can't recall just where. Raised on pool and poker and a dollar here and there. Blackjack hand dealer man, you'd better pay off that last bet. Two-bit hand of twenty-one is all I ever get. Go down gambling, say it when you're running low. Go down gambling. You may never have to go."_

He raised one eyebrow but didn't open his eyes. "What's _that _supposed to mean?"

"_If you need me, let me know, gonna be around. If you've got no place to go, if you're feeling down. If you're all alone when the pretty birds have flown, honey, I'm still free. Take a chance on me."_

"Are you still on about O'Hara? Look…_I'm_ on the rebound, _she's_ on the rebound…even if there was the faintest chance that either of us would…make an effort to see the other in those terms, now is _not_ the time."

The loud electric/animal howl of the needle dragging across the spinning record registered Maurice's opinion on that statement better than any lyric ever could. The hi fi fell silent.


	12. Chapter 12

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _Psych_ or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other Psych-Os like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

**Rating: **T

**Spoilers: T**hrough current episodes, particularly strong from _Heeeeere's Lassie._

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Twelve: Drive By<strong>

A messy kitchen still awaited her at home, and lunch's burrito supremo seemed like a lifetime ago, so Juliet ran through a drive through and bought herself a fruit parfait. She decided to eat outside, on the beachfront benches near the station where she often took lunch. Carlton was the one to turn her on to the spot, in the early days of their partnership. He took lunch there nearly every day, if the weather was nice and they weren't in the car. She hadn't known him well enough at the time to realize that he didn't come for the beauty of the ocean. In truth, she _still_ wasn't entirely certain why he ate there. He hated eating outdoors - he considered every chittering squirrel or screeching gull to have larcenous intentions or loaded bowels - and he didn't seem interested in the bikinis. The only possible explanation? Watching for crime.

Juliet went for the scenery, and be damned to crime.

But she had no eye for it today. Her mind was spinning. She couldn't be one hundred percent certain but…she thought that the Chief had inexplicitly signed off on something she hadn't wanted to say in so many words. Had she actually been giving some sort of tacit approval to a…a _relationship? _Between Juliet and _Carlton?_ The idea was ridiculous…

…and surprisingly intriguing.

Sure, she'd often thought that Carlton harbored ill-concealed…feelings…for her, but _she'd_ never actually seen him as a romantic prospect…had she? Of course he was her _partner_, and inter-office relationships were not entirely kosher with the department - as he'd learned the hard way, which only added another layer of "don't touch" to the equation - but…well…he was a good-looking man and a hell of a fine cop, and that was pretty sexy. He was also the best friend she'd made in six and a half years in Santa Barbara.

But he was a hard man to know, and he could be a bit unpredictable in certain ways. Which was to say, you could always count on him to do the right thing and say the wrong thing, but in between there were a lot of ways he could surprise you. His entire relationship with Marlowe Viccellio was a good example of that. Who would have ever thought that Carlton Lassiter, hardliner on all things pertaining to the letter of law, would pursue a relationship with a convicted felon?

She thought about that long and hard while she spooned up yogurt, blueberries, and granola crunchies. Maybe it wasn't such a surprise after all, once you broke it down. Marlowe committed her crime out of love and loyalty to her desperately ill brother, and that, Juliet thought, was the sort of extenuating circumstance Carlton could understand if not outright condone. If all other options were exhausted and Lassiter were in a similar predicament…Juliet thought he'd go to just about any extremity to help someone he loved. He'd pretty much done that already, and for Juliet. He never told her that Chief Vick had tried to stop him from rushing to her rescue when Yin held her captive and Abigail's whereabouts were still unknown, but she'd found out just the same. That kind of insubordination could end a career, and he hadn't hesitated to put his on the line. For her.

Carlton's career meant _everything _to him. Or at least she'd thought it did. Apparently some things were more important to him. The idea that _she_ might be one of them was both touching and terrifying.

Someone pulled into a parking spot nearby, windows down and radio blaring a song from Train.

"_On the upside of a downward spiral, my love for you went viral and I loved you every mile you drove away. But now here you are again so let's skip the 'how you been' and get down to the 'more than friends' at last. Oh, but that one night is still the highlight. I didn't need you until I came to, and I was overwhelmed, and frankly scared as hell, because I really fell for you._

"_Oh, I swear to you, I'll be there for you. This is not a drive-by. Just a shy guy, looking for the two-ply, Hefty bag to hold my love. When you move me, everything is groovy. They don't like it? Sue me. Mmm, the way you do me. Oh, I swear to you, I'll be there for you. This is not a drive-by."_

She was getting used to the karmic nature of music. She barely twitched as her brain cropped up associations between the ridiculous but peppy lyric and her serious and stolid partner - who could, at times, be at least a bit ridiculous and even, from time to time, a little peppy. Certainly _peppery._ Grumpy. Easily frustrated and quick to anger. Callous but caring. Wounded but still fighting.

She was starting to feel sloppily sentimental. Focus on the negatives, Juliet, remind yourself why Carlton really wouldn't work out any better than Shawn. In six and a half years, how many times has he noticed a new outfit or hairstyle? How many times has he bought the morning coffee? How many times has he allowed Shawn to irritate him to the point of complete irrationality?

There was a problem with her attempt to accentuate the negative. In six and a half years she was fairly confident that he'd noticed _every_ new look she'd tested out, he'd simply _pretended_ to be oblivious because of that whole "no inter-office romance" issue. And no, he didn't often spring for coffee but how many times did he treat for pastries? And for every one time Shawn succeeded in making Carlton act as childish as Shawn was normally, there were another _ten_ times where Lassiter merely withstood the barrage of drivel, stoic and quietly dignified, like a tired but patient bull being teased by a Jack Russell terrier.

So what, then, were the positives? Well, there was the whole _good-looking _thing, that was nice. He was fit, too - she knew he _wanted_ to eat sugary foods and not work out, but he kept the sweets to a minimum and jogged daily, not out of _vanity_ but because he wanted to feel good and be fit for the physical side of the job. He'd even stopped taking sugar and cream with his coffee, a major sacrifice. But he was a man who could _do_ that kind of thing because he had determination and persistence, and once he made a resolution he stuck to it. Unlike some people.

Okay, stop thinking about Shawn Spencer. Bad for the blood pressure. Worse than three creams and four sugars in your coffee, that's for sure. Just focus on Carlton for now.

So. Tall and strong and fit, good-looking, with the sexiest eyes she'd ever seen not on a movie screen. A voice that could, at times, send a shiver down the spine and turn the legs to jelly - either in fear _or_ desire. Occasionally evasive, but otherwise completely honest - at times brutally so. Honesty looked like an intensely sexy quality at this point. He had little charm and a lot of brashness, but that, too, worked in his favor in the wake of Shawn Spencer. He cared, despite his best efforts to hide it, about her _and_ about humanity in general. He could growl and cuss all he wanted to, but she could see it - every time they came to clean up the aftermath of human tragedy, she could see the soft heart lurking beneath that crusty exterior. And while he had no problems whatsoever with speaking his mind, loudly and at length, he was in the final analysis a quiet man, not a loudmouthed showboat. She smiled as she remembered, in her first year with the SBPD, Chief Vick describing quiet as _who_ Lassiter was, rather than what. She wished she'd listened to the Chief that time, instead of plowing ahead with her ill-advised surprise party, but even though the whole thing was a catastrophic disaster she didn't regret it as much as she probably should. She'd learned things about her irascible partner in the process of completely humiliating herself and turning his life upside-down, and that was worthwhile.

Was he relationship material? Well…she was starting to wonder about that. _Now _wasn't the time to pursue anything, of course, but…later? After both of them had time to settle back into a natural emotional groove in the wake of their failed relationships? Hmm…

It was difficult to keep her mind from straying to the tactile memory of her fingers in his thick salt-and-pepper hair, so heavy and silken and luxurious…

Eventually she realized her spoon was scraping the bottom of an empty container. She stood up, tossed the cup in a nearby garbage can, and went back to her car. She felt jazzed, in a way she didn't quite understand. Maybe all she needed was a drive.


	13. Chapter 13

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _Psych_ or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other Psych-Os like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

**Rating: **T

**Spoilers: T**hrough current episodes, particularly strong from _Heeeeere's Lassie._

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter there is NO chapter Thirteen: In Dreams<strong>

"_A candy-colored clown they call the sandman tiptoes to my room every night just to sprinkle stardust and to whisper, 'Go to sleep, everything is all right.' I close my eyes, and I drift away into the magic night. I softly say a silent prayer, like dreamers do, then I fall asleep to dream my dreams of you."_

"Damn, Maurice, you do like the Big O, don't you?" Lassiter mumbled sleepily, unaware that he was, in actual fact, sound asleep and dreaming. He did not, as a rule, dream - at least not dreams he would ever remember, even vaguely, upon waking - but since moving into the top-floor condominium at 1101 Prospect Gardens he'd had some _intensely_ vivid dreams. He'd thought it was the drugs. Certainly that may well have been a factor at first.

"Actually _you_ do, or so I gather from the fact that you have seven records and four CDs. Only two artists you've got more of are Frank Sinatra and Warren Zevon. I don't suppose you can explain the commonality between those two to me?"

Lassiter opened his eyes - again, only in the dream as his actual physical eyes remained closed although they rolled and twitched in REM. He recognized the scruffy, bearded figure who sat at the other end of the couch. It was himself.

He was not happy to see this manifestation. In the first incredibly unsettling dream he'd had after moving in, this version of himself had scared the living hell out of him in fine Amityville Horror style.

"Relax, that wasn't actually me," Amityville Lassiter said, reading his thoughts or at least his body language. "Well, it _was _me, but only in so much as I'm you and it was _your _drugged-out brain that created that dream. I hope that makes more sense to you than it does to me. You're the Zevon fan, so it ought to."

"Who are you?" Lassiter demanded, although he thought he already knew.

"Maurice," Amityville Lassiter said. "Or at least that works for me. If there _is_ a me, which there really isn't, you know. Not in a personal pronoun sort of way, anyway."

Maybe there was something to the idea that being a fan of Warren Zevon helped to make convoluted, macabre concepts clearer, because Lassiter actually thought he understood that. "So…what are you, _really?" _he asked.

Maurice shrugged. "If you wanted to be very technically accurate you might just as well call me 1101 Prospect Gardens, but that's not exactly right, either," he said. "A building is just brick and stone, after all. Maybe the truest sense of what amounts to the me-ness of _me_ would be to say that I am the sum collaboration of all the lives that have passed through these halls. This structure has seen a lot of human energy, a lot of it very traumatic. That leaves a stain. You should know that well enough - in your line of work you're routinely exposed to the darkest aspect of human nature. But it hasn't all been bad. There've been births, weddings, parties, love, happiness…that all leaves a mark, too. So I'm…all of that. Mixed up with a whole lot of you."

"So if you're me, what's with the, uh…" Lassiter made an all-encompassing gesture at his face and head.

Maurice shrugged. "Search me. I guess this is just how you expected me to look."

"Are you really here, or is this a dream?"

"Both. You're dreaming, yes, but you've got music on the brain - my fault, I guess - and you called me in. It's a way of communicating more directly, but to be honest with you I'd sooner stick to the metaphysical DJ-ing. It's hard to keep the difference between you-_you_ and you-_me_ clear when I'm actually in your head."

"_The cattle all have brucellosis. We'll get through somehow."_

"See? Now _you're_ the one putting records on," Maurice observed.

"Wait a minute, just tell me one thing. Why are we talking at all? In dreams or otherwise? There are forty-seven other occupied units, and nobody else seems to be having conversations with the radio. Why _me?"_

"There are a lot of reasons, actually. You got rid of that psycho bitch who kept killing tenants, that was a big one."

"That wasn't me," Lassiter admitted, shamefaced.

"Well, you brought in those turds that caught her, so that's close enough for me, especially since you were about three deep breaths from being the next suicide - or maybe murderer, in your case." Maurice seemed blissfully unconcerned about either possibility. Apparently he could read Lassiter's mind, probably because he was actually in it, because the next thing he said was, "Understand, I don't actually have a concept of right and wrong. I just absorb things. That particular tenant caused me to absorb a lot of things I'd rather not have, so I'm grateful she's no longer living here. What she did and what it did to you and the others really doesn't register with me in terms of human morality. I consider you did me a good turn by causing her to be _not here_, so I'd like to do you a good turn in exchange. I've picked up something of a sense of _quid pro quo _over the years."

"So you want to repay me by humiliating me in front of my partner?"

Maurice shook his head. "I want to help you get what you want. I've absorbed a lot of your emotions in the short time you've lived here, and I know you want _her."_

"And what makes you an expert on human relationships?" Lassiter asked, a little ruffled.

"I've absorbed thousands of them over the decades," Maurice said simply.

"And have you…'helped out' in the past?"

"No."

"So I reiterate: Why me?"

"Well that brings me back to all the _other_ reasons I have for communicating with you. And the biggest one of those is probably just the simple fact that I _can."_

"You…can?"

"There's a lot going on with you, Detective. Most of it well below the surface. Repression might be polite but it's also at least a little bit dangerous, don't you think? Frankly I'm surprised you haven't triggered a little poltergeist activity long before _me."_

"Are you trying to say I created you? By…being repressed?"

"It certainly helped. I don't think I ever once thought in terms of 'I' and 'me' before you came along, for one thing, and I definitely never had so much ability to make myself heard and understood. I was here, in some form, but you're the one who gave that form substance."

Lassiter blinked. "How?"

"Hell if I know. But you've got at least a touch of the dramatic temperament in you, and that might have been all you needed for there to be a connection between us. You see, in the end I'm really nothing more than a building, but I'm a building whose creator poured every ounce of his artistic vision into creating, and frankly, it didn't work out well for him. And I think that was the start of me, all that hope and despair and crushing disappointment, all culminating in a murder/suicide. You even look a little bit like my architect, in so much as he was tall and thin and intense, with light eyes and dark hair. And you've known more than your share of crushing disappointment, although I think you'd no sooner eat a bullet than you'd ever actually have killed that man who shrieked like a lady. You're tougher than that. Tougher than _him_. The architect, not the lady-man - I figured _that _went without saying."

Lassiter sat silently for a long moment, then said, "I wonder what Warren Zevon would have made of this situation?"

"Probably a full album," Maurice replied. "Surely you'd rate at least one song of the 'Roland the Headless Thompson-Gunner' flavor."

"Complete with a semi-incoherent reference to Patty Hearst."

"Given that the shrieking lady-man would probably make at least a token appearance in the lyric, I would bet more on Shelly Duvall. Or Jamie Lee Curtis."

Lassiter yawned widely. "Damn, sorry. Didn't know it was possible to feel sleepy when you're already asleep."

"This is probably not the most restful sort of sleep you could be getting," Maurice said, "and you haven't slept in a long time. I'll see if I can back off. We can 'talk' more later. Like I said, I prefer interacting when you're awake."


	14. Chapter 14

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _Psych_ or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other Psych-Os like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

**Rating: **T

**Spoilers: T**hrough current episodes, particularly strong from _Heeeeere's Lassie._

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Fourteen: Searching For a Heart<strong>

Juliet didn't know how a "drive" turned into a headlong rush to Prospect Gardens, but soon she found herself parked in front of the gloomy structure and climbing out of the driver's seat. Moving on pure momentum, she walked through the doors into the art deco lobby and hit the call button for the creepy old elevator. Strangely, this time around she felt no apprehension whatsoever as the gold mirrored doors slid shut behind her. The whole building had taken on a definite if ephemeral aura of welcome.

At the fifth floor the doors opened to find her face-to-face, more or less, with another woman. Short and heavily pregnant. Although she hadn't met Lassiter's nearest neighbors since they'd been out of town when she took part in his "Painting Party" when he first moved in, Juliet realized this must be Rose Marie Farrow.

"Hello," the woman said with a bright smile. "Are you new in the building?"

"Hi, no, I'm just visiting," Juliet said. "I'm Juliet O'Hara, I'm Detective Lassiter's partner."

"_Really?" _Rose Marie said, and gave Juliet the once-over in that peculiar over-interested way specific to Women Bearing Misapprehensions. "Wow. You're…not what I would have expected."

Juliet knew the woman had misconstrued the meaning of the term "partner," it would have been the easiest thing in the world to simply correct her and go on about her merry way. Instead she said, "What do you mean?"

"Oh, nothing against you, dear, or him, exactly, it's just…well, you seem a little bit out of his league, you know what I mean? You look so…_up."_

"Up?"

"Perky. Sociable. Beautiful. And he just seems so…stand-offish. And if you'll forgive me for saying, a bit peculiar."

"In what way?"

"Well, there's the light bulb issue, for one thing," Rose Marie said. "Lloyd might have caved eventually, I suppose, but the new building manager, Harold, well he's just _cowed_ by Mr. Lassiter. There isn't a light bulb over forty watts in the entire building anymore."

"Carlton is very safety conscious, Mrs. Farrow, and the building does have old wiring." Which didn't explain why his previous condo also never vaunted a light bulb of more than forty watts, as that had been all-new up-to-code construction, but Rose Marie Farrow and her Bump didn't need to know that.

"I suppose. But he's peculiar in other ways, too. Doesn't mix, you know? Just sits in his apartment all day listening to old music, and sometimes there's a lot of banging around in there, like he's throwing things. And sometimes it sounds like he's talking to himself."

"All day?" Juliet asked, with an alarmingly elevated brow.

"Pretty much," Rose Marie affirmed. "The music and banging, at any rate. I don't normally hear him talking until late afternoon or early evening."

_That's because that's the only time he's actually home, _Juliet thought. "How well have you been able to hear what he's saying?" she asked.

"Oh not very well," Rose Marie said. "Our living rooms abut each other, you know, but the walls in this building are pretty thick. But I think I should tell you - today I think he's reached a whole other level of peculiarity. Instead of just talking to _himself, _he's actually holding conversations. With the _radio."_

Juliet nodded slowly. "I understand your fears, Mrs. Farrow, but actually what you're overhearing is an old police academy trick for working out cases," she lied glibly. "Forces the brain to refocus itself so that details stand out instead of getting mixed in with all the extraneous information. It can certainly be disconcerting when you don't understand what's happening, but it's really nothing to be concerned about."

"…Oh, I see," Rose Marie said doubtfully. "Well, that is a relief, I guess."

"If you'll excuse me, Mrs. Farrow, I have official police business to discuss with Detective Lassiter."

"Oh. _Oh! _Of course! Silly me. I'm sorry to have kept you, officer. Have a good day." She stepped onto the elevator and the doors closed behind her. Juliet breathed a sigh of relief. She walked up to the door of unit five thirty-six. All was quiet inside. She knocked. Music started to play, very quietly.

"_Darkness in the morning, shadows on the land. Certain individuals aren't sticking with the plan. And I'm searching for a heart, searching everyone. They say love conquers all. You can't start it like a car, you can't stop it with a gun."_

The door opened with a gentle click. No one stood on the other side. Juliet peered into the unlit condo and saw Lassiter sitting on the couch in the living room, head back and eyes closed. She was fairly certain he was sound asleep. She tiptoed inside and closed the door behind her.

"Carlton?" she ventured in a whisper. "Carlton?"

No response. As she drew near she could see his eyes rolling and twitching at high speed under his dark-fringed eyelids. He was dreaming. She smiled. Somehow she doubted that he had very many _happy _dreams, but at least this one didn't look like a nightmare, at least from the outside. She didn't want to wake him up but he didn't look terribly comfortable with his neck ratcheted back like that and his long legs stretched across the floor with no support. She carefully eased him over onto his side and arranged his long limbs into a relatively secure position on the tiny couch.

"_Leaving in the evening, traveling at night, staying inconspicuous. I'm staying out of sight. And I'm searching for a heart. Searching everyone. They say love conquers all. You can't start it like a car, you can't stop it with a gun._

"_They tell me love requires a little standing in line, and I've been waiting for you, lover, for a long long time. I've been pacing the floor, I've been watching the door. Meanwhile I'll keep searching for a heart."_

Juliet knelt by the side of the couch and arranged the cushions under her partner's head so that he looked a bit more comfortable. He never made the slightest sign of waking, though he did snuggle sleepily into the pillow once she had it in the right place. Her smile became a grin. Oh, how he would grump if he knew how cute he looked, sound asleep and dreaming. He hated any suggestion that any part of his appearance or personality could at any time qualify as "cute," but he'd be blushing even as he growled about it. Likewise, he growled if someone made the suggestion that he was in any way "sweet." But in his endearingly clumsy way he could be _very _sweet. Sweet and cute. Seemed like a winning combination once you added it to the mitigating mix of personality traits and character flaws that combined to make him so very different, not just to Shawn Spencer but to any man she'd ever known. Of course, if he were to suddenly startle awake right now she wouldn't find staring down the barrel of whatever gun he had hidden in the loveseat very sweet _or_ cute. His paranoia was unnerving but also justified - "A lot of people want to kill me," he'd said once. "I take great pride in that." She brushed his hair back from his face with her fingers and marveled again at the incredible raw silk texture of it. Wasn't graying hair supposed to be coarse?

The song faded out and a new one began. It was clearly the same artist, a singer she wasn't familiar with, so for all she knew it was merely the next song on the album, whatever album that happened to be. But somehow she doubted it, irrational as it seemed.

"_If you're all alone, if you need someone, call me up and I'll come running. Reconsider me, reconsider me. If it's still the past that makes you doubt, darling that was then, and this is now. Reconsider me, reconsider me. And I'll never make you sad again, 'cause I swear that I've changed since then, and I promise that I'll never make you cry. Lets let bygones be forgotten. Reconsider me, reconsider me. Reconsider me, reconsider me."_

Carlton _had_ changed a lot over the time she'd known him, particularly in the past couple of years. In some ways he was still as tightly wound as a watch spring but he'd loosened up a lot. He was a lot less likely these days to say something rampageously inappropriate (although she was still pondering that quick retort to the art museum's curator: _"Could you put a value on your father?" _the man had sneered, and Carlton had immediately popped up with _"387 thousand," _which made Juliet wonder if she should investigate any suspicious circumstances surrounding the elder Lassiter, wherever he was and if he was even still living), and he was a little more likely to smile and say something nice. He'd learned, more or less, to accept and even to dispense the occasional hug, and he actually now possessed a reasonably casual wardrobe. Of course, she was also sure he was still wearing the military garters - _Socks up and tails down! HUAH!_ - but that didn't bother her. "Tucked in" was nice, particularly after seven months of "artfully disheveled."

She realized she was seriously considering him in terms of a romantic relationship, which should have been a little bit frightening…but it wasn't. Not at all.

"_Well I wrote our names a thousand times, just to see yours sitting next to mine," _Garth Brooks piped up from the CD player in the bedroom, and now Juliet knew for certain that _something_ was pulling the lyrical strings. _"And I sent you flowers, card unsigned. Anonymous. And in days to come, like days that passed, my heart beats for you - always has. Though you know me only as anonymous."_

Had Carlton been in love with her? Was he still? She didn't know, not for certain, but she had strong suspicions. She wanted him to be happy - he'd more than earned that, it wasn't too much to ask for a friend. And Chief Vick, in the past, had more than tacitly suggested that it was her duty as his partner to ensure that he got what he needed to keep functioning…

…and, come to think of it, that was a two-way street, wasn't it? Odd how she'd never stopped to consider that before, even though looking back she saw quite clearly all the ways Carlton worked to honor that arrangement. He'd even worked his ass off to accept what must have been a completely unacceptable relationship between her and Shawn just because it was what she wanted, because it made her happy that he was able to set aside his anger and his ego and at least pretend that everything was okay.

At this distance she could see the slight swelling in his jaw on the left side. She was a little ashamed that she hadn't noticed it earlier. And then she saw something else she thought she should have noticed earlier - his left ear bore the indentation of a piercing, probably long since closed up. She grinned to picture Carlton Lassiter with an earring, last remaining indication of a previously unsuspected rebellious phase. Probably got it at college, when he first got out from under that strict Catholic upbringing, a dirty little secret he'd hide every time he went home for a visit. Maybe she _should _have noticed it some time ago, but she thought she knew why she hadn't - usually the only time she was at eye level with his earlobes she was on the other side of him, in the passenger seat of the cruiser.

Her hand kept stroking his hair and she saw that he was smiling slightly, eyes still rolling in that oddly active dream state. She hoped he was having a good dream. She didn't think he let himself dream often enough.


	15. Chapter 15

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _Psych_ or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other Psych-Os like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

**Rating: **T

**Spoilers: T**hrough current episodes, particularly strong from _Heeeeere's Lassie._

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Fifteen: Never Say Trust Me<strong>

In his dreams Lassiter was transported back through several weeks of memory. It was a stakeout, holed up with O'Hara and Spencer and Guster in an empty apartment with a good view of the abandoned storefront across the street, which Spencer claimed was the headquarters of a gang of jewel thieves. Lassiter was certain that had been true at the time Spencer had scoped the place out before "sensing" it publicly in Chief Vick's office, but it wasn't true anymore and they were wasting a lot of police resources on it - something they actually spent a lot of time doing chasing Spencer's leads, a fact the media always neglected to mention when they were propping up the egotistical little freak once he finally got it right.

It was late. They'd been watching the blacked-out building for hours, and both consultants had been sound asleep in a heap on the floor for at least the last two. Lassiter and Juliet were both at the tail end of a very long, hard double-shift, and they were exhausted. Lassiter took a position propped against the wall with a good view of the window and told Juliet to take a breather. She was too tired to argue.

He closed his eyes for only a moment, but long enough to be taken completely by surprise when she snuggled into his shoulder. "Shouldn't you be doing this with Spencer?" he said, trying and failing to keep a note of bitterness out of his tone.

"You fit me better," she said, more than half asleep already, but he was no longer remotely tired. _You fit me better. _He knew what she meant - he was bigger than Shawn, big enough for her to fit rather comfortably under his arm and in the hollow of his shoulder. But he hadn't been able to keep himself from thinking of all the _other _ways he fit her better than Spencer did, if she could only see it.

Spencer hadn't even seemed jealous when he woke up later and found them that way. In fact, he'd been insultingly amused.

"Look Gus," he said. "Isn't that adorable? It's like an old Coke advertisement where the little girl is waiting for Santa but she's fallen asleep on the rug curled up next to her big, fuzzy Irish Rockhound."

"Wolfhound."

"What?""Irish _Wolfhound, _Shawn. An Irish _Rockhound_ is an amateur geological enthusiast named Seamus O'Mallory."

"Gus, I can't do this with you right now."

Okay, so on one hand it was a good thing that O'Hara was dating a man who wasn't jealous, but on the other it was damned insulting to be viewed as so unthreatening as to qualify as another _species_…if Spencer had actually _meant_ wolfhound and not rockhound, at any rate. Lassiter wouldn't put it past the snoopy bastard to have ferreted out his secret love of all things igneous and occasionally metamorphic. _Sedimentary_, my dear Guster…

The dream was getting unpleasant and his mind shied itself down a different track. A track dictated by the music playing in his condominium and the gentle hand that stroked his hair while he slept. Once again he heard her innocently-intended words, _"You fit me better," _but the context in which she said them was considerably less innocent than it actually had been. Nothing _pornographic_, it wasn't that kind of dream, but certainly hope-inspiring and on-turning. Filtering through from outside the realm of REM sleep was always the music.

"_Sweet dream baby, sweet dream baby, sweet dream baby, how long must I dream? Dream baby, got me dreaming sweet dreams, the whole day through. Dream baby, got me dreaming sweet dreams at nighttime, too. I love you, and I'm dreaming of you, but that won't do. Dream baby, make me stop my dreaming. You can make my dreams come true."_

"Maurice, knock it off already," he mumbled, coming partly awake.

"Who's Maurice?" Juliet asked.

Lassiter answered without waking any further. "The condo."

Juliet's hand hesitated near his temple. A faltering smile played about her lips. "The condo's name is Maurice?" she asked.

"Actually he's the whole building. But he's not really a he, he's just…drawing from me."

"He's the musical one, I assume?"

"Yeah."

"Is there any particular reason why he seems to be trying to disc jockey a romance?"

"He's got it in his…head? bricks?…that you and I ought to be together."

She giggled. "Wonder where he got that idea?"

"I guess he knows I've been half in love with you for a long time."

Her hand stopped its gentle petting again. "Carlton, do you think you're still asleep?" she asked.

"Yes." Then his eyes popped open. _"Shit."_

She laughed and planted a kiss on his brow. "It's okay, you didn't confess anything I wasn't already fairly certain of. Although the fact that the building has a name did come as something of a surprise."

"What…what are you doing here, O'Hara?" he asked. "How did you get in?"

"Maurice opened the door for me," she said, with a smile. "And put on an impromptu concert for me, too. Who sings a song that goes, 'They say love conquers all. You can't start it like a car, you can't stop it with a gun?'"

He sat up. "That's 'Searching For a Heart,' by Warren Zevon."

"Is he also the one that sings the song that says 'reconsider me' about a dozen times?"

"Yeah. That song is called 'Reconsider Me,' appropriately enough."

"I recognized Garth Brooks when I heard him, but the song was a new one on me. Something about a guy who sends roses but doesn't sign the card?"

He thought for a minute. "'Anonymous,' I suppose. It's the special bonus track off the limited edition of the album _In Pieces."_

"And then there was 'Sweet Dream Baby,' which I'm pretty sure was Roy Orbison."

"Yeah, I heard that one."

"Can I ask you something about that?"

"I…suppose so," he said warily.

She smiled shyly. "Were you dreaming about me?"

He blushed. She laughed. Then she kissed him - on the brow again, but it sent shivers through his entire body. "I think that's very sweet," she said.

"O'Hara…why did you come over?"

She shrugged. "I don't know, exactly. I didn't really plan on it, I just wanted to sort some things out in my mind and found myself here. Doesn't surprise me all that much, actually. You're _always_ the one I come to when I need to talk or when I just need to be around someone who _won't_ talk unless there's something important to say."

"What is it you need to talk…or _not_ talk about?" he asked.

She laughed. "Oh, just something kind of silly. I tried to talk to Chief Vick about your musical poltergeist, and she may have gotten the wrong idea about you and I."

"The…wrong idea? About you and me?" His eyes got huge. "W-w-what did she say? She didn't say anything about a transfer, did she? I mean, you _told_ her there was nothing to it, right?"

"Relax, Carlton, she was actually kind of cool about it. Sort of a 'don't ask don't tell' stance, as long as our professional partnership stayed strong. And no, I _didn't_ tell her there was nothing to it. Partly because it took some thinking before I really understood what she was getting at, and partly because I'm not so certain there _is_ 'nothing to it.'"

"W-what do you mean?" he gulped. She placed one hand on his cheek.

"Carlton, I know I broke your trust in me, and I'm sorry about that. More than you can know. Do you think there's any chance I can ever earn it back?"

The silent record player burst into life again. _"What will be will be, yeah. That is all that I know, girl. You should never say trust me, 'cause I know you'll be there, yes I know you'll be there. I'll be as right as rain can be, this is our love affair. Never say trust me. My faith in you is all you need. Love is all I need. You should never say trust me, it's already been done, it's already been done, beneath the seas, beneath the trees, and under the sun, and under the sun."_

"Marvin Rainwater?" Juliet asked.

"Gordon Lightfoot," Lassiter replied.

"I get the names mixed up," she said. "Lightfoot was the one who sang the really long song about that ore ship that sank in Lake Superior, right?"

"'The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,' yeah."

"I like that one."

"O'Hara…Maurice's interference notwithstanding, I just wanted to tell you…when I said that I didn't trust you anymore I was mostly just upset and lashing out. I trust you. I do. And I want to say that…I see and appreciate the fact that over the time we've been partners you've tried really hard to see the best in me. Most people give up on that pretty quickly, where I'm concerned. I just want to say thank you, for that. For not writing me off."

"I would never write you off, Carlton."

Gordon Lightfoot piped up again.

"_You said you were through with romance. Why take a chance on anyone? You're so beautiful, too, I can tell by the way that you dance. They say that people don't change, but why rearrange the original? You do something to me that my eyes cannot see at a glance._

"_Signs of a new beginning. Signs of a life worth living. The better to forget than to be all that upset. It's the time to taste the wine. And maybe someday things will change and come within range, and be laughable. Everything is okay, I can tell by the way that you dance. They say that people don't try. Well, that's just a lie. They work miracles. It's a gift from above when we talk about love and romance._

"_Signs of a new tomorrow. Signs of a life without sorrow. The better to forget than to be all that upset. It's the time to taste the wine. And maybe someday you will be romantic like me, when I'm with you. And I think you might say I can tell by the way that you dance. They say that people don't change. Like 'Home on the Range,' it's original. You do something to me that my eyes cannot see at a glance. You do something to me when we talk about love and romance."_

"Maurice is a little pushy, isn't he?" Juliet laughed.

"Reminds me of my grandmother," Lassiter said.

"Mine, too. But I think he's onto something. Don't you?"

"I'm…not really sure how to take what you're saying, O'Hara."

Her hand brushed across his cheek and through his hair. "Maybe you'll know how to take this," she said, and kissed him, full on the mouth.

Now that she had his undivided attention, she drew back. "What would you say to me," she asked, "if I told you I wanted you to take me for a ride in a hot air balloon?"

"A hot air balloon?" he repeated, blinking. "I'd say it sounds kind of expensive, I guess. I'd have to put off getting my tooth fixed. But if that's what you really want to do…"

"_Carlton," _she said, with a half-hearted slap at his chest.

"What? Did I get it wrong? I don't mean that I _mind_ the expense, honest. I'm just a little bit strapped right now, with the condo and all."

"No, you put off the expensive and unnecessary _balloon ride_, not the bad tooth, silly ass. You're just looking for an excuse, aren't you?"

He blinked again. "No. Well…maybe. But I don't _want _to put you off. If you said you wanted me to book you a flight to the moon I'd find a way to make it happen."

She smiled. "You know what? I believe it. And I don't want you to take me up in a balloon, I just wanted to know that you would if I asked you to. I didn't really need to ask, I knew you would, but it's nice to have my suspicions confirmed."

She kissed him again, deeper, and the record player once again began to play "The Liberty Bell March." Neither of them paid any attention to it whatsoever.


	16. Chapter 16

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _Psych_ or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other Psych-Os like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

**Rating: **T

**Spoilers: T**hrough current episodes, particularly strong from _Heeeeere's Lassie._

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Sixteen: I Go to the Barn Because I Like the Tab<strong>

"You know this is entirely the wrong time for us to be thinking about starting anything," Lassiter said.

"You're right. Entirely the wrong time."

"Both of us are fresh into tough times, emotionally. We need to give ourselves time, let the jagged edges heal."

"You're right. You are so right."

"You're…not going to get off of my lap, are you?"

Juliet giggled and snuggled her face into his shoulder. "Not a chance."

He put his arms around her. "It's not like I really wanted you to," he admitted. "But we do need to take a huge step back and reconsider the wisdom of this."

"Carlton, logic and reason don't always have to dictate every aspect of life," Juliet said. "All right, _logically_ we know that we're both emotionally raw right now. We can _reasonably _expect that our emotions are going to be a bit extreme for awhile. But for my part, I can assure you that _logic_ has assured me that I have _reasoned _out my attraction for you and I'm certain that I'm right where I belong. With you."

"And Maurice. Don't forget him."

She giggled again. "How could I leave out our paranormal yenta? Thank you, Maurice," she called out to the room.

Wayne Newton began to sing "Danke Shoen" from the hi fi. "He…_does_ know that means 'thank you,' right?" Juliet asked.

Lassiter shrugged. "I don't think I have any music that says 'you're welcome,'" he said. "A better question would be does Wayne Newton know that it's _not_ pronounced 'donkey-shane?'"

"I'm not going to get into a debate about linguistic integrity in the music industry," Juliet said. "They do enough damage just to English for that kind of discussion to last entirely too long, and I'd much rather debate whether or not we really _need_ to be wearing clothing right now."

"O'Hara, I live in a sentient condominium - and yes, I said _condo-minium_. I may never get undressed again."

"Oo, good point. Do you think Maurice would be offended if we went to _my_ place?"

"Tempting as the suggestion is, I don't think I'll have much git-up-an-go until this tooth is fixed."

"Oh crap, I forgot all about your tooth," Juliet said. "I'm sorry."

"'Sokay. Wish _I _could forget it."

"Well, after we get you treated you'll be able to. Oh. I think I forgot to tell you that I got us both the day off tomorrow, so I can drive you. Just in case he gives you something that makes you dopey."

"Like a lapful of Juliet, for instance."

She grinned salaciously and wriggled. "Are you entirely _sure_ your 'git-up-an-go' got up and went?"

"Well…you _are _proving to be a remarkably effective pain reliever."

"Mmmm, you know I'm starting not to care that the building is watching. I mean, okay, giving the place a name makes it feel a little extra creepy, but it is still a building, right? A home. And the Farrows certainly don't seem intimidated into celibacy by the place."

"I don't think the building uses their music library to talk to them."

"Didn't you say that this…spirit, or whatever…is drawing from you? What did you mean by that, exactly?"

Lassiter sighed. "I'm not exactly sure. I've…uh…done a bit of research on paranormal activity in the past few years, and the bulk of it either makes no sense to me or sounds like complete bullcrunch. What I mean is it _all_ sounds like bullcrunch but I'm willing to keep my mind open enough to say that maybe I just don't 'get' it. Well, one of the things I kind of think I understand is the possible explanation for so-called 'poltergeist' activity. It's supposedly caused by the people who are experiencing the phenomena, subconsciously. Usually because of some sort of severe stress or emotional trauma. I don't know that I really believe it's possible, but what about a place, a place that's experienced decades of just that kind of human emotion from many sources? If that tension could all be absorbed into the structure then over time perhaps it could regurgitate itself, as it were, in these physical manifestations. And maybe they get stronger when they connect with someone who…exudes a lot of tension." He looked sublimely embarrassed to say any of this. "Maybe that energy even starts to reflect a bit of that person's personality."

"A person like you, for instance," Juliet said.

"Yeah, I guess."

"So really, then, if that's true, and it sounds fairly plausible to _me_ under the circumstances, not that I know about this sort of thing, then Maurice is really just _you_ being reflected back by a psycho-reactive mirror."

He nodded slowly. "I question just how little of this sort of thing you know about if you can so casually toss a term like 'psycho-reactive mirror' out there, but, yeah, I'd say I pretty much agree with you."

She smiled. "I may have done a little research about paranormal activity myself," she admitted. "I'd be willing to bet for the exact same reason you have, if perhaps not quite to the same end. In any event, if Maurice is just _you _then there's really no point in being self-conscious."

"O'Hara. I was raised Catholic. I'm _conditioned_ to feel self-conscious."

"Well, we'll have to work on that, won't we?" Juliet said in a seductive purr. She kissed him. From the bedroom, music began to play.

"_Well I'd like to think I'm a mess you'd wear with pride, like some empty dress on the bed you've laid out for tonight. Maybe I'll tell you sometime, time, sometime, and you were right, right, you were right. Outside, on your doorstep, in a worn-out suit and tie, I'll wait for you to come down, where you'll find me, where we'll shine. Outside, on your doorstep, in a worn-out suit and tie, I'll wait for you to come down, where you'll find me, where we'll shine. Outside, on your doorstep, in a worn-out suit and tie, I'll wait for you to come down, where you'll find me, where we'll shine."_

"What song is that?" Juliet asked.

"I…have no idea," Lassiter said honestly.

"It…sounds kind of familiar to me."

"Me too. But I don't actually remember having heard it before. And I would be prepared to swear to you that I don't have it in my collection."

Juliet listened for a minute. "I like it. It speaks to me. I think it speaks to _us."_

"Yeah." Lassiter kissed the top of her head. "You know that things are never going to be this easy again, right? I mean, even if Vick quietly approves, there are Higher Ups who very well might _not_, so it may not even be her decision. And there's Spencer to think about. _Both _of them, actually, and probably Guster, too."

"I suppose that's true. But let's worry about that stuff when we have to, okay? Right now, I just want to enjoy being your partner. In all things."

"My partner." A slow smile split his lips. "Always."

**FIN**


End file.
